


The Fall of Rome

by AcrylicMist



Series: TFOR-Verse [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Boys In Love, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Dark, DaveKat-freeform, Feels, Fluff and Angst, Full Moon phobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Injury, Isolation, Lycanthropy is no joke kids, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Murder, Not a small amount of murder, Paranoia, Secrets, See a doctor if you experience any of these symptoms:, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, davekat - Freeform, explicit school violence, guns and knives, self-destructive behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2020-09-23 19:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 27
Words: 143,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20345632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcrylicMist/pseuds/AcrylicMist
Summary: Dave's not liking being relocated across the county to a new school under a new name that isn't his, hiding from his past.Meeting Karkat helps, even if it might get him killed.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't my actual werewolf AU, I'm still working on that one. But, I literally had a dream last night and had to immediately write the entire thing down and Now i'm four chapters in and on a roll so I guess I have two vastly different werewolf AUs now???
> 
> Anyway, I'm trying for a darker theme here so look out for that. I mean the tags, all of them.

_Three years ago_

_Afterward, the police poured over the tapes to try and see exactly how the events of that day had unfolded. They put together a timeline of everything that had happened. The graph they used wasn’t long and was frighteningly spare, but it captured the middle and the end in perfect detail._

_It was the beginning that they missed. _

_After all was said and done and the lucky wounded taken to the hospital, here’s what the police had to work with. _

_At exactly 2:30 pm all of the school students were excused from normal class activities to attend the pep rally. It was Senior Night that Friday and the whole school had gathered to wish the team well on the last home game before playoffs. _

_The seventh graders were excused last. Upperclassmen were given priority seating in the small gym so the youngest students were seated last so they could fill in the remaining empty seats in the back of the room. _

_As the other students filed into their seats, no one noticed that Karkat Vantas was missing. _

_After, the police learned that he’d been excused to go to the bathroom just minutes before the bell rang for the pep rally. Sometime in-between that five minute span of time—the wolf got him. _

_This was the part the police were missing. How had the man gotten into the school? Who were they? What was it that drove them to target a random student all of thirteen years old and overpower them, passing along a virus that was more of a curse?_

_The cameras missed all of this. They never saw the initial attack. They never learned the man’s face. When he appeared on the grainy black-and-white school video footage in front of the gym, he wore a mask over his face to hide his features, just to prove beyond any doubt that this massacre had been pre-meditated. _

_But the cameras did catch him walking along the empty hallways of the school, the young, newly Turned wolf at his side straining towards the open door of the band room where the students were warming up for the pep rally. _

_The man pulled the beast easily away from that door, leading the wolf carefully towards the gym much like he was dragging an over-eager cat by the scruff of it’s neck. _

_Werewolves weren’t dangerous to other werewolves. Even Turned they recognized one of their own, and the wolf made no move to harm the man that led it along, it’s nose sniffing the air, scenting human prey. _

_When the strange pair reached the gym, the man simply opened the door, thrust the wolf inside, and closed it behind him._

_There’s a moment right when the screaming begins where the video shows the man wiping his gloved hands together, a peculiar job-well-done kind of movement. _

_Inside the gym the cameras were still rolling. There was no sound with this footage, but there was an abundance of other recordings as well. Students with cellphones videoing the start of the pep rally captured what it had sounded like. _

_The first scream was cut off with a choke as the wolf locked it’s jaws around her neck. Then it was a chorus of chaos and screaming, blood everywhere, students and teachers trapped in a small room with a monster that’s only thought was to kill. _

_It was a bloodbath that would have gone on for a lot longer than the 33 students who had died if not for the one that decided to fight back. The back corner of the gym by the locker rooms had been under construction, and loose bricks, cinderblocks, and building materials had been neatly piled in the corner. _

_A younger student stole a nail hammer off of the tool rack, and stood his ground as the wolf finished mauling a classmate and lunged for him next. The beast took the boy’s left arm in it’s teeth, but the boy managed to strike the wolf in the skull with the blunt end of the stolen hammer a few desperate, thunderous times, and with a whine the wolf let go of his arm, it’s eyes rolling as it’s skull cracked. With a spasm the wolf dropped to the tiled, bloodied ground and lay still._

_And now it was time for the ending. With the werewolf down and out, the screaming students that had survived or been wounded managed to flee the gym just as the police arrived with guns drawn. The Principal was there, panicked, scanning each of the downed bodies for his son as the police advanced on the fallen werewolf. _

_Right as the police closed in the young wolf gave a shudder, muscles jerking, and Turned back into a boy. _

**Present Day**

Dave Strider was kind of hating this new school. He didn’t know anybody here and was missing his friends from back home. He would never have admitted it, but he felt lonely even though it was only his first day. 

For the most part he kept his head down during the first day of class. It was already halfway through the semester and every teacher seemed unprepared for a sudden new student. He ended up sitting in the back a lot of the time, or right up front by the teacher’s desk where no one else had wanted to sit. 

And then he spotted Karkat. 

It was hard not to notice him—the name Karkat Vantas was infamous these days. Dave had known what the other teen had looked like long before the school board had handed him a picture of the local werewolf with strict instructions not to approach him for any reason. 

Karkat sat directly beside the teacher’s desk in every class, his head down, shoulders hunched. At lunchtime he vanished completely. The other students didn’t bother him even to ask to borrow a pencil. There was a strict, unbroken bubble of space between Karkat and the rest of the school. 

The sight made Dave curious. Like most people he had a solid grasp on what lycanthropy meant, and Karkat was the only werewolf Dave had ever seen in person before. 

In history Dave was forced to sit beside the guy in the only other available seat. Karkat didn’t move when Dave set down his bag. He didn’t act like he’d noticed Dave at all. 

Dave took the opportunity to openly study him, ignoring the class lecture. Werewolves were vicious creatures, the bane of humanity, responsible for countless deaths across the country each year.

But they were also rare as fuck because not many of them survived for long with their affliction. Karkat was supposedly the youngest one ever recorded or something, and the only publicly out wolf in the nation. And Dave was naturally curious about something that might bite his head off sitting next to him in a classroom.

Karkat looked fairly normal. Unruly black hair, olive skin without a single blemish to it, and a face that looked carved out of stone. Only his eyes were abnormal. They shone a bright, mutant red like blood on fresh snow, the mark of a werewolf. 

Dave kept his own eyes covered with his prescription sunglasses. He might have been human but people still got buggy over red eyes so he tried to keep them covered up as best he could. 

History was the last period of the day and the teacher religiously dismissed them from work fifteen minutes early, so right at the end of the day there were a few minutes for the class to socialize before the bell rang. 

Dave leaned over to Karkat. “Hey.”

The guy barely glanced at him. “What?”

Dave shrugged. “Nothing,” he said back. “I’m new here. I was just saying hi.”

“Great,” Karkat answered, not really sounding interested as he dug a book out of his backpack and cracked it open on his desk. 

Dave peeked at the title. He didn’t recognize it but it seemed kinda chick-flicky. Romance or some other mushy shit probably. He watched silently as Karkat underlined a few words and began to scribble out notes to himself in the margin. 

Dave didn’t try to read the small, cramped handwriting. “What are you writing?”

Karkat glanced at him again in mute surprise, like he was annoyed to find Dave talking to him. “It’s none of your business.”

The coldness in his voice didn’t bother Dave. “I think that defacing a library book is everyone’s business,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Actually, who pays for those things? The school? Taxpayers? Obama? I take the destruction of public property very seriously, I’ll have you know. Gotta protect those tax dollars so they go to the good educational shit like books and not coke and hookers for the school board.”

Karkat closed the book with a snap, his voice thin. “It’s my own book,” he defended himself. “And my dad works for the school board, so drop it.”

“Ah, Daddy’s on the school board,” Dave nodded, his fingers fidgeting with a pen as he rapidly tapped it against his desk, needing to make noise as he asked the question that had been bothering him all day. “Is that why they allow you to be here? Because of your dad?”

Every other student talking shut up as Karkat stared at him, incredulous.

For a moment Dave was sure he’d said something taboo. Spoken the unspeakable. Let the wolf out of the bag. 

Karkat was still glaring at him, and his glare had sharpened, his red eyes nearly glowing. 

“Karkat!” The teacher snapped, sounding scared, and his eyes shot to her as he slumped down into his desk again, ignoring Dave.

“I’m fine,” the wolf spit out automatically, his gaze fixed on the floor. He didn’t move or speak or do much of anything else but sit there and slowly shrinking in on himself. Slowly the rest of the class relaxed again as the chatter resumed. The teacher shot Dave a sharp look that promised detention.

That was when the guilt hit Dave. His pen stopped tapping at the desk top as his hand fell still. Shit. He’d poked the sleeping bear only to have it turn and bite itself. He wasn’t sure what to feel, but watching Karkat hunch lower and lower in his chair did funny things to Dave’s chest. 

Maybe it was because Dave could recognize guilt when he saw it. He could see the emotion clearly written across the other teen’s shoulders, like it was Karkat’s fault for getting angry, for having a completely normal reaction to Dave’s insensitive asshole-ness that should have gotten him punched in the face. 

Karkat hadn’t even done anything, just stared back at Dave and the entire classroom had held its fucking breath like they were watching a bomb diffuser guy about to cut the wrong wire and blow them all to hell. 

The bell rang and several people in the room flinched at the sound, still on edge from Karkat doing absolutely fucking nothing. In a way it made sense—Karkat was famous for having a body count to his name. Maybe it wasn’t in Dave’s best interest to prod at murder werewolves. 

The teacher held him back after the bell rang. Karkat was on his feet and out the door before anyone else could move as Dave slunk over to the teacher’s desk.

She gave him a hard stare. “I thought,” she said sternly, “that you had been made aware of Karkat’s position at the school.”

“They might have mentioned it,” Dave said lightly, unwilling to lie. He moved his backpack to his other shoulder, cagey. He wanted to get out of here. The less time he spent in a classroom the better, and with the bull rung he was already getting antsy to leave. 

“So you understand that he is to be kept calm and unbothered at all times?” The teacher asked. 

Dave shrugged. “That’s not how werewolves work, you know,” he said boldly. “We’re nowhere near a full moon.”

“Still—”

“I thought he looked lonely,” Dave interrupted, vying for the good-guy angle to cut this half-assed intervention short. “I noticed that no one else here talks to him and thought I should try.”

The teacher held back her next words, carefully speaking. She didn’t sound like she believed him. “Well then,” she said. “I would try harder next time not to provoke him. He’s been through enough without other students messing with him.”

Dave shrugged again. “If you say so,” he answered, uncooperative. He stood and made his way for the door.

“And Dave,” She called out to him sweetly. “You have detention.”

Dave couldn’t hide his grin as he yanked open the door. “Not today I don’t,” he said, and waved goodbye as he let the door close behind him. He was on track to maintain his record of bad behavior at this new school. One day and he already had detention. This was going to be easy. 

The hallways were mostly empty now that the bell had rang. It was then that Dave began to notice the extra precautions that the school had implemented to better protect it’s students in case something bad happened. No one wanted a repeat of what had happened at Karkat’s old school. 

There was a camera on every corner. The windows were bullet-proof and barred with iron. Every classroom locked from the inside. There was always a police officer stationed up at the front office, armed with silver bullets. 

This school was a fortress. No wonder the system had decided it was the best, most well-protected place for Dave to go even with a resident monster prowling the halls. 

Or maybe the police thought a werewolf on site might make even Bro pause and reconsider his surely nefarious plans. 

Dave found his bus easily and climbed aboard. There, at the very back, was Karkat, still reading that trashy paperback from before. 

Dave swallowed a grin as he made his way to where Karkat was sitting. He wasn’t stupid enough to sit beside the wolf; Dave chose the empty seat across the aisle, talking advantage of the bubble of empty space that constantly surrounded the other teen. 

Karkat’s eyes flickered up as Dave plopped down and he snapped his book up between them, clearly set on ignoring him. 

“Wait,” Dave cautioned, raising a hand. “Yo, I’m not here to fight. I’m here to apologize.”

Karkat lowered the book just enough to glare mistrustfully at him. The bus jolted into movement below him, bouncing along the cracked pavement. 

“It’s true,” Dave said, placing his hand over his heart. He dropped his voice lower, leaning in. “I can’t fuck up and risk getting kicked out of this place or the system will throw another bitchfit at me for violating protocol.”

Karkat lowered his book some more, looking interested despite himself. “What system?”

“Wit-sec,” Dave clarified, whispering as he wagged his eyebrows.

Karkat scoffed and turned away, disgusted. 

“No, it’s true,” Dave said. “Honest to God. I’m hiding out here for my fucking life. Why else would they place me in the most secure school in the fucking country?”

Karkat looked at him again, something uncertain in his eyes. “You’re shitting me,” he said at last. “No one fucking admits they’re Witness Protection on day fucking one to a complete stranger. No one can be that pants-shitting moronic.”

Dave shrugged again. He tended to do most of his emoting through shrugs. Shit was just easier that way. “And who would you fucking tell? Your dad?” Dave asked, grinning. “I bet he already knows. The system briefed them on my arrival before I set foot in the building.”

Karkat scowled at him, his eyebrows crinkling. 

“See?” Dave prompted. “My secret’s safe with you because you’re a social outcast. I can say this because I’m also a social outcast.”

Karkat barked out a laugh. “Dave,” he said, “You’ve been here for one day. You’re not a social outcast—you’re just new. Give it some time and you’ll be sitting with the popular kids at lunch.”

“Nope,” Dave said, popping his lips on the ‘p’. He smiled again, this time something more even and open as he reminisced the good old days. “I was a loner at my old school. The delinquent. I’m betting that record won’t change just because I hopped a few state lines and changed my name.”

“They made you change your name?” Karkat said, looking sad.

“So you believe me?” Dave asked.

“Not even a little,” Karkat said, bringing his book up again. “You might just be a compulsive liar for all I know. You kinda look like one too. Shady drifter with a bad hair dye job and douchebag sunglasses.”

Dave frowned, still overly sensitive about his artificially darkened hair. “The dye’s to help hide my identity,” he offered. “I know it looks like shit against my complexion, please don’t remind me. It was either this or a shaved head and I just fucking know that I can’t rock the bald look.”

Karkat’s shoulders shook with a withheld laugh. He was grinning, grinning like he was surprised with himself at the expression as he looked at Dave. “Really?” He asked. “You’re not shitting me are you?”

“Scout’s honor,” Dave swore. 

“And those douche glasses?” Karkat asked sarcastically. “Couldn’t you just wear tinted-contacts or something like a normal person?”

Dave froze. Karkat noticed. 

“What?” Karkat asked defensively. “Did I offend you?”

“No,” Dave said quickly. “And if you did I deserved it for what I said to you earlier.”

“No,” Karkat said at once. “That wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have gotten angry.”

“Dude, no,” Dave protested. “You would have been totally within your rights to punch me for that. I was being an asshole.”

Karkat rolled his eyes. “I don’t think you’ve figured this out yet,” he said. “But I’m not allowed to get mad. Ever. For any reason. Me having emotions makes other people uneasy.”

Dave shrugged. “Fuck them,” he suggested. “Shit, Karkat, you’re like my age. 16. We’re allowed to be angsty teens and do stupid shit.”

“No,” Karkat said, sighing. He looked out the window. Dave could see the trees flashing past in his eyes as he said, “not me.”

“That’s hells of unfair,” Dave told him. “You should sue. I know a few good lawyers who might be able to help you out.”

That made Karkat grin again, thought he tried to hide it. “Well, shit,” Karkat said, looking at him. “I don’t know what you witnessed to get sentenced to high school hell with me, but welcome to the club I guess. Maybe things won’t be as boring with you around.”

“Hell yeah,” Dave said back, raising his fist for a fist-bump. “Friendship secure.”

Karkat made no move. He stared at Dave’s offered hand like he was considering breaking the fingers, but that might have just been the perpetually pissed-off look he wore. For all that he was a werewolf, Karkat didn’t seem the type of guy to be prone to violence. Dave had been around enough people who were to know the look. 

Dave slowly put his hand down. “What?” he asked. “You don’t get many fist-bumps, do you?”

Karkat shook his head. “People normally go out of their way to avoid being near me.” He shrugged like that didn’t bother him but Dave saw right through the act. “Actually initiating contact is almost unheard of.”

“Why?” Dave asked, confused. “It’s not like you’re contagious. You can’t catch the werewolf bug from a handshake.”

Karkat’s eyes sharpened again, but lost their edge after a few seconds. “You know,” he considered Dave. “Most people don’t say that word around me. They don’t ask questions. They don’t bring up what I am.” He stared hard at Dave, his gaze piercing. “You do. Why’s that?”

Dave swallowed and his throat was tight. “I don’t know,” he lied. “I guess I’m just not scared like everyone else.”


	2. chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I am updating this again right now. I'll try to get a new chapter up every other day. I'm trying a new posting thing to challenge myself, see how fast I can actually get this story nailed out on the page. So far I think it's working because this story is exploding and I love it and I'm having so much fun working on it
> 
> So, here's chapter two!

It became a habit for Dave too seek out Karkat. It was easy to find him—Dave just looked for where everyone else wasn’t. 

At lunch Karkat ate alone in the front office. Dave only discovered this after getting kicked out of the lunchroom for stealing as many of the little cardboard cartons of apple juice as he could carry, and then it was on to the Principal’s office for a slap on the wrist.

Except Karkat was there waiting by the door, chatting easily with the uniformed police officer at his side. 

“Dude, what?” Dave had to interrupt, giggling. “Are those fucking carrots?”

Karkat paused and looked up in surprise from his lunch, then he scowled. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Language, both of you,” the policeman said, but he didn’t really look that interested in correcting Dave’s potty mouth. The radio at his hip crackled. 

Dave held up his pink slip like an offering of peace. “They busted me for a little harmless lifting,” he shrugged and sat down in the row of seats beside Karkat, swinging his legs idly. “Maybe if I’m lucky they’ll throw me in the slammer. That should get me out of PE at least.” He looked at the policeman and grinned. “What do you say officer? Take me downtown? I’ve been very bad today.”

Karkat laughed, looking delighted, which made it worth the look of exasperation of the poor police officer’s face. “Jackson,” the officer sighed. “Shouldn’t you at least try to behave yourself?”

Dave leaned back, stretching out his arms. He felt wide awake. “Not my name dude,” he told the guy in blue. “It’s Dave. Just Dave.”

Karkat’s head whipped around in shock. “Your fake name is Jackson?” He asked, a wicked grin spreading across his lips. It looked like he’d been given an unexpected gift. “Jackson? Seriously?”

“No, dude don’t call me that shit-ass name,” Dave said, mock-offended. “It’s just Dave.”

“Fake name?” The officer echoed, growing suspicious as he glared at Dave. “Have you been telling people your real name?”

“Only the first part,” Dave defended himself. His fingers drummed out a beat on the rail of the chair. “I told you guys not to call me Jackson. Changing my last name was bad enough, but fucking Jackson? That’s where I draw the line.”

The officer just stared between him and Karkat like he was trying to put the pieces together. “What. What have you told Karkat?”

“Only that I’m with the system and that Dave’s my name,” Dave said, sparking with challenge. He wasn’t sure how he felt about police officers, even now after they’d helped get him out of his Texas hellhole. The feeling of unease, that need to challenge them was probably just his disrespect of any and all authority figures peeking through. 

“Are you fucking out of you mind?” The man asked him, his eyes wide, and Dave laughed. 

“Language,” he said, grinning. Score one for Dave. Police— zero. The victory was strong enough to not feel hollow. “This is a school, remember?”

“Dave,” the officer tried, his voice gentle. “You’ve got to lay low and stick with the program. I know you never wanted this but we are trying to help you stay alive.”

Dave sank down into his seat, the picture of ease, unbothered by everything. “I won’t go by Jackson,” he vowed, his voice light and idle. “My name is Dave.”

The man sighed again and turned away, frustrated. 

Karkat was looking at him with interest. “So you are Wit-Sec,” he claimed, whispering. 

“And you’re in the front office eating carrot sticks,” Dave said, naming what else was fucking obvious here. He tapped his fingers against the arm of the chair he was in, full of reckless energy. “Do you always eat here?”

“Yeah,” Karkat nodded. “Outside of classrooms I’m not allowed in crowded places.”

That was kind of tragic actually. Dave decided not to dwell on it. Other people’s trauma wasn’t his problem. He already had enough shit on his plate to deal with. “That’s not a bad deal,” Dave pointed out. “The cafeteria sucks ass and I bet that rule gets you out of PE, doesn’t it?”

Karkat nodded, looking sullen. 

“Hey,” Dave said gently, leaning closer. “Don’t worry about it. Personally I fucking hate crowds. Other people near me makes my skin crawl. I’d much rather get to hang out up here with the cool guys in the office.”

Karkat still didn’t look convinced, but the policeman offered him a deal. “I’ll let you stay up here at lunch if you promise to cut back on the intentional trouble-making.”

“Deal,” Dave said at once, shaking the man’s hand. Forcing a compromise in his favor made him feel bad about being so manipulative, but he couldn’t argue with the results. He had learned how to control people from the best, after all. 

Karkat just rolled his eyes as the Principal finally called Dave into the side office. “Jackson Lalonde!”

Dave didn’t hesitate, leaning back in his chair. “Call me Jackson one more time, see what happens,” Dave yelled back, not moving from his seat. 

“You’re fucking insane,” Karkat told him, but he was grinning. 

Dave couldn’t help but smile back as the Principal called for him again, this time his voice alight with tired resignation. “Dave, just get in here.”

Dave waved at both Karkat and the policeman as he sauntered into the office, choking back a smile the entire time.

…

Now that they were hanging out every day it was kind of obvious when Karkat stopped showing up for school. It was also kind of obvious as to why that was. 

This month the full moon fell on a Monday, and on Wednesday Karkat was back in the classroom like nothing had ever happened. Dave was burning with curiosity but said nothing as Karkat took his seat beside him in History class. 

All in all, Karkat looked just about perfect. The only thing off were the shadows caught under his red eyes like he hadn’t slept in days. 

Concerned, Dave leaned closer as the teacher began talking. “You okay?”

Karkat stared at him blankly. Dave could physically hear the clock ticking from the wall as the seconds passed. 

Karkat looked tired. “Don’t ask stupid questions,” he said at last. “I’m not in the mood to be bothered by you.”

Nonplussed, Dave pressed forward. “It was an honest question. You look like shit.”

Karkat’s eyes flashed a brighter red, but immediately cooled off again. “I do look like shit, don’t I?” He asked, one wiry eyebrow raised. 

“Yeah,” Dave nodded. “Sorry about that, but like, seriously, are you okay?”

Karkat shrugged. “Same old shit,” he said, unwilling to elaborate. “I’ll fucking live.”

Dave wasn’t sure how Karkat managed to stay awake until the bell rang, but he did it and silently turned in all of his completed work to the teacher. Dave turned in his schoolwork as well, not nearly as finished as Karkat’s was, but at least this time the packet wasn’t blank. 

Karkat noticed. He was always noticing things. “You didn’t finish your work?”

“I did most of it,” Dave said lightly, shrugging. “Figured that was good enough.”

Karkat bit his lower lip, worrying at it with his teeth. “Why?” He asked curiously. 

Dave shrugged again. “The way I see it,” he said. “The less effort I put into school the better. I’ll stick to the absolute bare minimum all semester, blow the final exams out the fuckin’ water with my genius mind, and slide by with a B in the class all while doing absolutely fucking nothing all year. It’s a win-win situation.”

Karkat’s eyes were on him again. “Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “Even if you can somehow pull a 100% final exam grade out of your ass, which I’m not certain I believe, why not just put in a little more effort and get an A if school is so easy for you?”

“Why bother with an A?” Dave asked logically. “I have like, zero drive to strive for good grades beyond what little degree of fucks I myself give. The pressures of modern society can’t fucking touch me. And excuse you I am a certified genius. My IQ is of the charts when I can actually fucking focus on anything for longer than a three-second span of time.”

Karkat looked interested, and his gaze focused in on where Dave was rhythmically drumming his fingers on the desktop. His leg was bouncing up and down, jittery. “You know,” Karkat said gently. “They do make meds for that focus thing.”

“I know,” Dave answered, winking even though with his shades Karkat couldn’t see the gesture. “I’m on meds for it. ADHD and shit like that. You should see me when I’m off them. I bet I’m really balls-to-the-wall then.”

“You talk fast,” Karkat pointed out. “Do you ever sit still?”

“Not really,” Dave answered honestly. “And about the grades thing, I bet you have all A’s don’t you? Even with all the classwork you miss during full moons?” He was slightly teasing and he wanted Karkat to know it. 

“Hey, I work fucking hard for my grades,” Karkat defended himself. “Why don’t you?”

“Why do you?” Dave asked, turning the question around on him. 

Karkat considered his answer. “Mostly to make my dad proud,” he admitted. “To prove I’m not completely worthless I guess. To keep me from dying of boredom because without the excuse of school I’d be locked in my house all goddamn day, slowly going crazy.” He locked eyes with Dave. “Your turn.”

Dave shrugged. “I don’t have anyone to impress,” he explained. “I’m the only one I’ve got to be proud of and the world decided long ago that I was a useless piece of shit and I just never saw the point of arguing with fate. Genius brain aside I’ve never been good at school, never liked it beyond the escape it offered, you know, and anyway I’m mostly self-taught. I’ll slack off, get my solid B-, and get the hell out of here as soon as fucking possible.”

The bell rang just then, and Dave jumped out of his chair, eager to get going. 

Karkat was still staring at him, his mouth agape. 

“What?” Dave asked, offering him a hand. “Need a lift?”

“There’s a lot to unpack in what just came out of your mouth,” Karkat told him seriously. 

Dave shook his offered hand again. “Later,” he waved away Karkat’s concerns. “It’s after school hours now and the Dave’s Blatant Issues Show only airs from 8am—3pm.”

Karkat huffed and stared at his hand again, like before, but this time he reached out to accept it and Dave easily pulled him upright. When standing Karkat was a good three inches shorter than him and Dave couldn’t stop himself from chuckling as Karkat shook off his hand.

“What?” Karkat snapped, looking embarrassed. 

“You’re like, so short,” Dave pointed out. “What are you, 5’ 4”?

“And you’re like, such an asshole,” Karkat parroted back at him, rolling his eyes. “I’m 5’6” actually so go fuck yourself. Not all of us get to be giants.”

“You probably haven’t hit your growth spurt yet,” Dave confided in him as they walked out of the classroom. “I was super tiny until a few years back. There’s still hope for you.”

“Thanks,” Karkat said, all sarcasm as he tried to flatten down his wild hair. It was windy outside today and as soon as they stepped out the front doors Karkat’s hair was hopelessly tousled. 

Dave followed behind him to the back of the bus. “Why do you take the bus?” He asked curiously. “I know it takes you directly to the school board office, so what’s up with that?”

“Are we playing twenty questions now?” Karkat asked, somewhat irritated. 

“Sure,” Dave said, surprising him. “I haven’t seen you since Friday, remember? I missed talking to you, so ask away. I don’t mind.”

They sat across from each other wordlessly. Karkat looked pained. “Why do you always say the important things between two halves of bullshit and end it with a question that derails attention from the actual honest to God topic you’re trying your best to avoid?”

Dave blinked at the verbal hit. “Is this because I said I missed you?”

“Maybe,” Karkat said, hostile. “Now answer the question.”

Dave let his shoulders lift, then fall flat. Shrug. “It’s deflection, I guess,” he speculated, fixing Karkat in place with a hard look. “I don’t like people knowing me.”

“Odd thing to say considering the fact that you haven’t shut up since I met you,” Karkat said back. 

“Name three facts about me that aren’t my real first name or the fact I’m with the system,” Dave said immediately, only partially playing. “Because those don’t count. I told you those already.” He sat there, smug, because Dave might have a habit of running his mouth but he’d been extremely careful with what shit actually came out of it. He did actually take the in-hiding thing seriously. He knew what was at stake if he fucked up.

Which was why he was blown away when Karkat immediately counted the facts off his fingers like he didn’t even have to think about it. “One,” Karkat said. “You’re from the south. You might be very good at hiding it but I can still make out that southern accent in your voice. Plus you hold doors open for people and that’s a dead giveaway. Two,” Karkat continued, relentless. “You get into trouble because you don’t know what else to do with yourself besides attract punishments and think you’ve got to cultivate some ironic cool guy attitude to stay detached because you don’t want to put down roots here and think because you deserve to stay lonely and unloved that the best way to drive other people away is by becoming a delinquent, but the joke is on you because all of your troublemaking only effects yourself because I think that deep, deep down you’re actually a good fucking person and this is all an act because you go out of your way to avoid hurting others with your rule-breaking and aren’t quick to anger, even if the scars on your hands say that you’ve been fighting. Three,” Karkat said, his gaze hard. His voice shook. “You only set out to make friends with me because you thought I was the most dangerous thing to associate with due to your chronic recklessness and disregard for your own personal safety, as seen with your flippancy of disobeying the system rules put in place to keep you safe because you’re looking to get hurt. You carry this blame with you that I don’t fucking understand and the only person to take it out on is yourself so you do stupid, reckless things hoping that they’ll turn around and bite you in the ass because you think you deserve it. There. Did I leave anything out?”

Dave swallowed thickly. His throat hurt. “You forgot the part where I’m fluent in Spanish.”

“Fuck you,” Karkat spat at him, his shoulders shaking with anger. “I refuse to be your own personal self-inflicted torment, so go find someone else to kill yourself on.” With that he stood up. The bus rolled at a halt outside of the school board building and Karkat marched off of the school bus. He didn’t look back.

Dave watched him go, feeling that lonely hole in his heart open up again. His pulse was pounding and he felt cold as ice as the bus pulled away, shaken to his core with the knowledge that Karkat had seen everything so clearly, had pierced right to the core of Dave's bullshit bravado so easily but had still miraculously come to the exact wrong conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I think I'm getting better at chapter twos. I'm learning. 
> 
> Plus writing Dave as an unapologetic asshole is unexpectedly great and leaves so much room for some great character growth. This fic is shaping up to be a straight up trip and I'm loving it.


	3. chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter right on time! This story is on fire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Karkat was in school the next day. There was probably some rule against him skipping class so Dave predictably found him in the front office at lunchtime. This time he was eating a salad out of a Tupperware container with a plastic fork. 

Part of Dave was filled with relief at the sight as some knot inside of his chest loosened. “Yo Karkat,” he said, sliding into the seat next to him like yesterday had never happened. He checked out the homemade salad. “Are you a vegetarian?” He asked curiously. “I’ve never seen you eat anything but vegetables.”

“Fuck off,” Karkat said, pissed, angling his shoulders away. “There’s chicken in here fuckwad, so leave me the hell alone.”

“Eating healthy I see,” Dave continued with his thought like Karkat hadn’t spoke. “Smart choice.”

This time Dave made sure to actually read the officer’s badge when he spoke up. Damn. Officer Johnson. Maybe Dave should have held off on the anti-Jackson tirade. Johnson was a half-step away from Jackson, fuck. “Dave…” The police officer’s voice was a warning. 

“Can’t you make him leave?” Karkat asked, looking at Johnson, plainly irritated. “He’s an asshole and I don’t want to deal with more of his bullshit.”

Dave bite down on his tongue as the policeman stared at him. “Actually I don’t think I will,” Johnson decided. “If I make him leave now he’ll just go and find some way to get into trouble and then I’ll be the one dealing with his bullshit. It’s best to keep this one where I can keep my eyes on him.”

“Oh come on,” Dave protested, indignant. “You say that like I kick puppies in my free time.”

“You managed to break the only goddamn window in this entire building that wasn’t bulletproof just this morning,” Johnson reminded him. “So if I were you I’d just sit there and eat my lunch in silence.”

Dave dramatically hung his head. “That wasn’t my fault,” he said. “I didn’t know it wasn’t bulletproof and couldn’t take a hit. I didn’t even mean to slam the door that hard.”

“Wait,” Karkat said, straightening up. His tone was shaky. Dave could see where his fingers gripped the knee of his jeans, the knuckles white. “There was a non-bulletproof window on a door?”

“Easy, Karkat,” Johnson said, measuring out the distance with his hands. “It was only a few inches across and less than a foot tall. It was never judged to be a security risk.”

Karkat’s eyes narrowed. “I still don’t like the idea of that,” he said. He sat up straighter, his eyes nearly glowing. “Could it be replaced with safer glass?”

“Sure,” Johnson shrugged. “But it’ll be more expensive.”

“Fine by me, I don’t pay for this shit,” Karkat said, shrugging. 

Dave watched the interaction closely. He couldn’t help but open his mouth. “Do you do that often?” He asked Karkat. “Recommend upgrades and procedures like that?”

Karkat blinked at him, clearly uncomfortable. “Yeah, he said, his voice clipped and short. 

“Most of this was his idea,” Johnson said proudly. “No one knows him better than himself so who else would we ask to help us werewolf-proof the school?”

“You’re shitting me,” Dave grinned, delighted. “Karkat, really? You’re the one that made this school into a fucking fortress?”

Karkat sighed, resigned. “So what if I helped? No one else out there knows fuck-all about what a Turned wolf is capable of and I had to make sure the school was as safe as possible.”

“That’s fucking awesome,” Dave said, overjoyed. “Like total high school aesthetic aside this place is legit. Trust me, I’ve been looking for camera blind spots and ways in and out since I got here and I’ve found jack shit. I’ve seen bank vault blueprints sloppier than this building. It’s like fucking Fort Knox up in this bitch.”

“Bank blueprints?” Johnson said, zeroing in on that sentence. “What do you know about those?”

Abruptly Dave shut up. His hands clenched into fists as his heart pounded. He’d said too much. “Joe told me,” he offered.

Karkat was staring at him like he was trying to force the pieces to fit but couldn’t quite get the edges to line up. It made Dave feel nervous and fidgety. 

“Who’s Joe?” Johnson asked all fake-casual like he wasn’t going to radio this shit in to Dave’s agent as soon as he was out of earshot.

“Joe mamma,” Dave said, forcefully pulling his bravado back over himself as he smirked at the disappointed police officer. 

“Still not being helpful, I see,” Johnson huffed. “You know Dave, you could make this a lot easier on yourself if you open up and are actually honest with us. At the very least you could take this seriously.”

Dave could not put to words how unprepared he was to do exactly that, ever, for any reason, so he just shrugged again, uncharacteristically silent as his leg bounced. 

Karkat watched him with cold eyes. 

…

Back in boring History again, this time talking about globalism or some bullshit like the root of the world’s problems couldn’t be traced back to 15 different old white men with megacorperations. Dave wasn’t listening. He was too busy passing notes to Karkat, which was risky business considering how close to the teacher they sat. 

Not that Dave gave a shit—he already had detention for the month. Dave flicked the piece of paper at the guy, waiting. 

Karkat was trying very hard to ignore him, but eventually curiosity won and he unfolded the note Dave had flicked onto his desk. He scanned the sentence Dave had left him and scowled, crumpling the paper. 

Dave tried again, writing more this time. 

Karkat didn’t even try to read this note. He just ripped it in half without hesitation. 

Dave put a hand to his heart, acting wounded. 

Karkat didn’t look swayed and Dave gave up on passing notes until the bell rang. 

Karkat immediately made to leave, heading for the door.

“Wait,” Dave said, and his hand darted out and grabbed Karkat’s sleeve.

Karkat froze, bristling at the touch. “Let. Me. Go.” He said, every word separate and burning with anger. 

“Meet me on the bus,” Dave asked him, releasing his sleeve. 

Karkat glared at him balefully. He held his bag close to his chest like he couldn’t wait to leave. “Why should I?”

“Because those three things you said yesterday?” Dave prompted him. “You got the last one wrong.”

Karkat squinted with suspicion, but Dave could tell he was intrigued. “Fine,” he huffed. “But this is your last chance, Lalonde.”

Dave’s hopeful expression faltered at the false name like just hearing it said aloud hurt him. He covered it up well though as he stood up, stretched, and eagerly trotted to the bus at Karkat’s side. The crowd of students parted to make way for them like Moses and the Red Sea. Some of the students were giving Dave odd looks like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing as Dave walked at Karkat’s side. 

It clearly made Karkat uncomfortable. He marched like he was expecting a fight, stubborn shoulders set in a line, his backpack worn like a shield. 

On the bus Dave sat across from him again, mirroring his posture. 

“So,” Karkat said, crossing his arms. “One chance. I swear to God if you waste it I’m never talking to you again.”

“Okay,” Dave agreed, accepting the terms with a hard nod. He mulled the words around in his mouth before speaking them, uncharacteristically slow and methodical, making sure he got the words right. “You’re right about the first two. I am from the south. Can’t say where, but I’m guilty of being southern born and raised and all of this mid-western shit confuses me. How can there be this much fucking corn?” He pointed out the window just then at the cornfield they were driving past. “Like what the fuck is that?”

The honesty didn’t shock Karkat. He didn’t laugh at Dave’s attempt at humor. How much had he managed to guess already? “I’d already figured that part out,” Karkat pointed out. “And this is an agricultural state, of fucking course there’s corn.”

“I know,” Dave said, leaning closer. He put up his hands. “I’m just covering my bases, dude. Next,” he said. “You fucking nailed me on the delinquent thing, I’ll admit. You got me. I’m busted. You just one-hit-killed my pretentious cool guy act. But,” he warned, “knowing what’s up and stopping the behavior are two very different things so I expect that I’ll stay my same old rule-breaking self. Three, and this is the interesting part because you both got it dead right and even deader wrong. It’s almost a paradox really. Statistically impossible at the very least.”

Karkat’ eyes were narrowed, the red of them flickering as Dave stared at him and threw caution to the wind. “You were right,” he said. “I did target you specifically to make friends, but not for the reasons you think.”

“Then why?” Karkat asked. 

“I knew who you were before we met,” Dave admitted quickly, rushing to get the words out. “It’s impossible not to. Yours is not a secret well-kept, and I couldn’t help but look at you and see a guy that’s been through the shit, that had all this guilt on his conscience about the past so let me go ahead and make my own guesses now,” Dave said, holding up three fingers. “One,” he said, “You have had years at this school to reach out and make friends but you haven’t because you don’t feel like you’re worth it, you feel like the risk is too much so you purposefully isolate yourself. Two,” Dave continued, “you’ve fallen into a rut of school, home, sleep, and then more school forever on repeat without any hope for anything else because you feel like if anything happens to shake that up something bad will happen because you don’t trust fate to be kind to you anymore and it will all be your fault so you resist change and fight to keep things in this safe little slice of normal you’ve managed to create here and you resent me for barging in and trying to change that, and three,” Dave said as Karkat eyes bugged out with rage, his hands in fists at his sides at hearing Dave call him out like this, “You’ll forgive me for saying the first two.”

“Why? Cocky bastard.” Karkat spat at him, his lips twisted up in a way that almost bared teeth at him.

“Because this is the real answer,” Dave said, swallowing. “I looked at you and thought, there’s a guy who fucking gets it. You told me that I’m carrying this guilt around with me and that’s exactly right, and like recognizes like because you carry that same fucking guilt.”

Karkat’s eyes were flint. 

Dave continued, his voice low, nearly a whisper. He was getting carried away, desperate. “What was I supposed to do? Hang out with all these normal people who have never been through the shit before who don’t know what it’s like to have a _fucking body count_?”

Karkat froze and Dave took a deep breath, steadying himself. “I looked at you and though that maybe you’d understand what that kind of burden was like,” Dave said, breathing hard. “That’s why I sought you out, not out of some masochistic self-destructive instinct but because you were my only hope of finding someone who might be able to understand.”

Karkat was furious, but he’d gone still at Dave’s words, quickly reevaluating everything he’d ever thought about Dave, and then, carefully and slowly, he calmed down. His hands loosened at his sides and his eyes lost that frightful, pissed-off glow. He considered Dave with new eyes, and Dave stared back, ready to be judged. 

The moment stretched between them as the bus pulled to a stop outside of the school board office. 

Karkat broke eye contact to look at the door. “Fuck it,” he said, sighing. “Come on, follow me. We need to talk.”

Dave eagerly jumped up to follow him. He could feel everyone else staring at them as they exited the bus but that didn’t bother Dave any. He’d already made his choice.

“This isn’t your stop, kid,” the bus driver tried to stop him for following after Karkat. 

“Its fine,” Dave said over his shoulder, walking past the man. The doors closed behind him as he stepped off of the bus, knowing that his agents would be pissed about him deviating from his route like this. 

“Where do you go after school?” Karkat asked curiously, his feet crunching on the gravel pathway.

Dave shrugged. “Safe house,” he said. “Where I get left alone until I can take the bus the next morning. It’s not much, but at least they remember to feed me and shit.” He kept his voice light but Karkat still wasn’t pleased. He looked even more pissed than before but this time it wasn’t directed at him. 

“How much trouble will this get you in?”

“Probably a lot,” Dave shrugged again. “They know where I am though, so it’ll be fine.”

“Do you need to call them or something?” Karkat offered, yanking the door to the building open only to drop into a chair that was right by the door. 

The blessedly cool air conditioning washed over Dave as he flopped into an adjacent seat and pulled up the leg on his jeans, revealing the blocky black ankle-tracker strapped to him. “They’ll find me,” Dave winked. 

Karkat stared at him, his mouth agape. “Shit,” he said. “They don’t even put those tracker things on me.”

“I guess I’m a special case,” Dave said, shrugging nonchalantly. Now that he was sitting his leg immediately started to bounce. “Flight-risk, I guess. I might have said some shit I shouldn’t have in the beginning that they took way too seriously.”

The small waiting area was empty and more bulletproof glass starched across the window of the receptionist’s desk. The window was empty though. The clock on the wall ticked above a fake tree in the corner. 

“What do you do here?” Dave asked curiously. It was the most normal place he’d seen Karkat in so far, and that was after noticing the automatic locks on all the doors. 

“I wait for my dad to get off work,” Karkat said. “Do some homework. Listen to music.”

Dave perked up at that. “What kind of music?” He asked, interested. “What bands, genres, and songs do you like?”

Karkat looked embarrassed. His ears were turning red. “Uh,” he fumbled, mumbling. “Just whatever shit comes on the radio I guess.”

“No, oh no,” Dave said, shaking his head. It had to have been something good, based on his reaction. Taylor Swift maybe? Nickleback? He had to know. “What’s your playlist like? You can’t hide from me, I live, eat, and sweat music. Or,” Dave paused, trailing off, the hole in his chest drawing tight again at the memory. “Or at least I used to. Not so much anymore.”

“Why’s that?” Karkat asked to change the subject.

Dave opened his backpack, pulled put his homework, and crumpled it into a paper ball. He could spot a trashcan through the small gap in the glass behind the receptionist’s window, and with perfect aim Dave sank the shot through the six-inch gap across the room. The paper ball sank out of sight without even touching the rim of the can. He shrugged. “I guess I just left music behind,” he said. He missed his turntables. He missed mixing beats, but he’d had to abandon all of his equipment when he left town. Dave still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It wasn’t like he could make music here and suddenly his fingers were twitching, itchy, feeling muscle memory for soundboards that weren’t there. 

Karkat whistled at the shot, eyebrows raised. “You should be in sports with aim like that,” he said. 

“Naw,” Dave said, not interested in the idea. “My godlike reflexes aside, laying low does not equal becoming a sports star sadly.” He gave Karkat a nudge with his elbow. “You should maybe try out for sports though. I bet you’d like it.”

Karkat was already shaking his head. “I’d hurt someone, and that would be cheating,” he said. “I’m stronger and faster than everyone else. It wouldn’t be fair, and there’s too much risk for injury.”

“I was thinking golf, not football,” Dave clarified. “Your speed and strength count for shit at that game—it’s all in the technique. Plus you could totally pull off those polo sweater vest things that golfers wear.” Dave had to reel in his mind as his imagination conjured up the image of Karkat dressed in one of those tight-fitting shirts. Dave blinked, forcing himself to focus.

Karkat luckily hadn’t noticed Dave’s lack of attention. “I’ve always sucked at sports,” Karkat confided, dropping his voice to a whisper as he looked around to make sure no one else was there. “Here’s a secret for you. Lycanthropy did not grant me hand-eye coordination or good balance and just last month I tripped on the stairs and broke my nose.”

Dave laughed louder than he should have at that. It was just so unexpected. “Shit, dude, really?”

“Really,” Karkat said, grinning. “My nose healed within the hour but it still freaked my dad out.” His head turned then, hearing what Dave’s ears couldn’t make out as the missing receptionist popped into view, squinting at Dave through horn-rimmed glasses.

“Karkat?” She asked, looking down her thin nose at them. “Who’s this with you? I thought I heard laughter.”

Karkat sighed. “He’s a friend from school. We were just talking.”

Taken back, the lady stared at him with shock. Dave gave a small wave. “Sup.”

She blinked furiously, nodded, and then vanished back out of sight. 

“Brace yourself,” Karkat said, not looking at him. “Here comes my dad.”

Dave wasn’t that concerned. He’d been dealing with disappointed adults all his life. Adding a new one to the ever-growing list of ignored and supposed authority figures didn’t concern him. 

The door to the office flew open halfway, then slowed down for the rest of its open swing like someone was trying not to seem as rushed as they really were. Karkat slouched lower in his chair, ducking his head. His ears were still scarlet with embarrassment. 

An unfamiliar man entered the room, dressed in a neat suit with a tie that Dave would have bet wasn’t a clip-on. He had the same thick, dark messy hair and olive brown skin, but that’s where the family resemblance ended. This man had imposingly broad shoulders that would have towered over most people even if he did hold himself like he was unaware of how to use his tall stature. His eyes were slate gray and Dave couldn’t help but wonder if that shade was the same as what Karkat’s eyes had once looked like before the wolf in him took them over and turned them the color of freshly spilled blood. 

“Karkat,” the man said sternly. “Who’s this?” Before Karkat could answer the man did a double-take, recognition flooding his face. “Jackson? Jackson Lalonde?”

Dave swallowed hard past the lump in his throat. “Not even close,” he answered, smirking. “It’s just Dave actually but you get points for effort.”

The man frowned. He clearly knew who Dave was and was not happy to find him sitting in the waiting room next to his son. 

Karkat made to ward off any further questions, explaining. “I invited him, dad. We were just talking.”

“Hmm,” Mr. Vantas said. He didn’t look angry, just faintly surprised. “You two know each other?”

“Not well,” Karkat said at the same time Dave said, “yes.”

Karkat glared at him, seething in that fake-mad way he had. Dave just grinned back, secretly loving this. 

“Well… Dave, then,” Mr. Vantas tried, his wording awkward. “From what I know aren’t you not supposed to be here?”

“Sort of,” Dave answered honestly. His fingers resumed tapping at the arm of his chair. “But I think everyone in this building knows my secret identity thing so why talk around the subject like it’s the season finale secret of Witness Protection’s Biggest Fuck Up?”

That was of course when the front door opened and Dave’s agent walked in, steaming mad and looking to kill. Of fucking course he’d heard the last part of Dave’s sentence, because just fuck his life. The Federal Marshall’s lips were a thin, hard line that would have scared lesser people, but Dave was unaffected. 

“Yo, Slick,” Dave said, antagonizing the man just a little. Gotta keep up the pretenses, yo. “What took you so long?”

“You little shit,” Slick snarled, pulling his hat down to cover the scar across his face where one of his eyes were missing. “The FUCK do you think you’re fuckin’ doin’?”

“Making friends?” Dave offered, but he’d lost his smile. His heart was pounding. 

That was when Slick’s eyes landed on Karkat and put two and two together. He groaned. “Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed, wheeling around on Dave, his voice loud. “This is not what I meant when I told you to lay fuckin’ low!”

“Hey now,” Mr. Vantas said, trying to calm down the situation. “Wait a minute, I’m sure no harm was done. Even you can’t argue that this isn’t a secure building. Dave was perfectly safe here with us.”

It made Dave feel weird, this strange adult trying to protect him. Bad weird. His stomach squirmed inside him and he felt nauseous. His fingers fell still and gripped the chair arm tightly, his knuckles white. 

“I doubt that,” Slick said, careless, and Vantas’s eyes grew hard and cold.

Karkat’s dad squared his shoulders. He seemed to grow another three inches as he rose to his full height. “Are you implying that my son isn’t safe to be around?”

“Oooh,” Karkat said, grinning as he shook his head. “Bad move dude.”

Hearing the ice begin to creak under his feet, Slick backtracked by bullshitting, pointing at Karkat. “You are not in my division, on my team, and are not my concern or problem. They don’t pay me to worry about you.” Slick rounded on Dave again, so mad that his accusatory finger was shaking as he leveled the digit at Dave. “You thought,” he said, low and angry through gritted teeth. “Pain in my ass that you are—you’re my fuckin’ problem. _ So go get in the damn car_.”

Dave stared at the shorter man impassively. Slick reminded Dave of an angry pitbull with a jowly, square jaw and one beady black eye. Mean and battle-scarred and certainly armed, Agent Slick wasn’t a man to keep waiting. 

“Maybe I will if you ask me nicely,” Dave said, feeling ice-calm and volatile. He hadn’t felt like this in weeks and shit, it was easy to fall back into his old wariness, judging the distance between him and Slick and the door and seeking out advantages in the surrounding room, every part of him tense and ready for a fight. 

Slick couldn’t see Dave’s eyes through his shades but even he knew he’d crossed a line. He rubbed at his face, his voice tired. “Just go get in the car, Dave. Not everything has to be such a federal fucking issue, you know?”

Dave nearly kept fucking with him just out of stubbornness, but Karkat was watching him, his expression both shocked and strangely torn. 

“Fine,” Dave relented, shrugging like it didn’t matter to him either way as he stood up. The overhead lights glinted off his shades as he turned to Karkat. “I’ll see you in school tomorrow,” he said, and then he tried not to slink out the door like a beaten dog. 

Slick was right on his heels, frustratingly close when all Dave wanted was distance. The car was obvious, an all-black two door with tinted windows. Dave slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the frame of the car. 

Slick paused to loosen his tie before getting behind the wheel. They said nothing as he pulled out of the school board parking lot, the back tires slinging gravel behind them. 

Dave stayed silent.

“Kid,” Slick tried, sounding calmer, more even, though it was clearly forced. “I ain’t used to dealin’ with teenagers and I’m not your fuckin’ babysitter.”

“If that’s the best apology you’ve got you might as well shove it up your ass,” Dave said back without looking at him. His eyes were fixed out the window. 

“Kid—”

“That’s not my name,” Dave said.

Slick took a deep breath. “Dave.”

Dave looked at him, still feeling hostile. 

“For all I know you’d been fuckin’ killed,” Slick grunted out, gritty, his voice hoarse. “I tend to assume the worst when charges go missin’, especially if they’re you.”

“I was fine,” Dave protested. 

“And how was I supposed ta fuckin’ know that?” Slick shot back at him. 

Dave lifted his leg and shook the ankle monitor, like that explained everything. “You found me, didn’t you?”

“With the goddamn werewolf,” Slick sighed, gripping the steering wheel. “Seriously kid, do you have a death wish?”

“Werewolves are only dangerous during full moons,” Dave answered automatically, defending Karkat. He watched the town fly by past the tinted windows, everything twice as dark through his shades and the illegally darkened windows. “And if I had a death wish I would never have gone to you guys in the first place.” 

That was one truth that shut Slick up for a few seconds, but only a few. 

“Kid,” agent Slick said again. “I’ve dealt with a lot of people with targets on their backs before, and none of them were in hot water quite like you are, so if I were you I’d learn how to fuckin’ help yourself and listen to me for once!”

“I wouldn’t be in danger if you guys would do your fucking job and catch him already,” Dave said with venom in his voice. “It’s been months. I’m getting tired of waiting.”

“Kid,” Slick said, glancing at him. “I get where you’re comin’ from, I do, but we are doin’ our best. The court case—”

“_I don’t care about your fucking court case_,” Dave nearly growled. Damn the legal system. His only concern was Bro. 

“Kid,” Slick said, growing angry again as they pulled onto the road to the safe house.

“Whatever,” Dave sighed, feeling the anger leak out of him. It took too much effort to stay mad about the same thing that had been hanging over him for months. Now Dave just felt tired. “I don’t fucking care, Slick. I just don’t fucking care.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You got me-- This is actually just a really convoluted Stabdad AU where the Midnight Crew are on the right side of the law. 
> 
> And oh shit, Dave's in trouble now but at least he made up with Karkat. The plot lines are being laid out. The stakes are being raised. Plot is happening ;)


	4. Chapter four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be both the shortest chapter and the only one that doesn't explicitly feature Karkat in it so *sobs*
> 
> This chapter gets a little heavy at times, emotionally so, so be prepared. The angst is inbound

Another full moon came and went. Dave had started to memorize the lunar cycle so the days that Karkat missed didn’t strike him with surprise. School sucked when Karkat wasn’t there, but that was a thing out of Dave’s control. Still, as the hours drug by and Dave listened to lectures he could have taught better than the teacher, he kind of longed to be locked in a panic room somewhere outside of the classroom that was currently boring him to death. Then he imagined what Karkat must have been going through and immediately felt bad for the thought. 

He spent the lunch break in the library, tapping away at an ancient desktop since he didn’t have a phone. 

He’d googled werewolves a few times before out of curiosity, but he’d stayed away from anything that had Karkat’s name on it. There were cellphone videos that existed that had been posted to YouTube about the incident. Dave wanted nothing to do with those. He felt no desire to watch a bloodbath anyway, but these days finding reliable werewolf facts without Karkat’s name in them was damn near impossible. It didn’t help that nearly 85% of scientifically verified information came directly from Karkat’s case. 

Still, Dave managed to find a few good sources to feed his curiosity. He didn’t learn anything new or useful. Most of these sites were dedicated to the few ways to kill werewolves and that shit just made Dave feel uneasy.

Most of the lore was old. The disease was the bane of ancient times, when werewolves would go on monthly killing sprees and women got burned at the stake for suspicion of the affliction. But it had started to die out within the last 300 years, mainly because the world’s wild wolf population had been eradicated out of fear of the disease. With wolves extinct and no new source of the virus to spread, lycanthropy began a centuries-long decline until it had just about faded from existence.

Until three years ago when it had soared back into popular media. Dave had a sour taste in his mouth as he closed the tab. His fingers were still tapping at the keys, typing nothing. Lycanthropy had been thought of as a terrible disease until one madman had weaponized it against a school, but here was the thing about madmen—they all had a purpose. Some sick, twisted manifesto. Dave was well-versed with bad men and evil people, but there was something about how the events had unfolded that day that was bothering him. He was no expert on the Skaia High School attack, but he’d gotten a basic outline from the news when it had first happened back when he was still in Texas. 

It was the only news thing that Bro had been interested in for weeks. He kept watching the reruns of the short clips of footage that the news had gotten ahold of before Karkat’s dad had secured privacy rights over the rest of the tapes, his gaze cold, occasionally nodding with sick approval, like he respected the wolf that had the balls to pull this attack off.

And that’s what was bothering Dave, the memory of Bro’s voice saying “This is what I’m talking about, Dave. This is the upscale shit that’ll make them scared. Whatever crazy bastard that did this was fucking brilliant.” And then he’d popped open another beer and drained it in one go. 

Dave remembered Dirk being there, silently wiping up the blood on the floor left over from Bro’s latest video as he listened along with the news reel, and then Dave shut the rest of that memory out because FUCK NO. 

His hands were shaking as he pushed away from the computer table so he hid them in his pockets. It was warm today and he was stuck wearing long sleeves but fuck this heat, he’d dealt with the sweltering Texas heat before for years. A little Midwest sun wasn’t about to break him. 

His ankle monitor was chafing at his ankle, and one day soon he’d take the damn thing off and tie it to a pigeon just to say fuck you to Spades Slick and the rest of his crew. Let them track down a damn bird with his tracker attached. Shit would be hilarious. 

The thought was enough a distraction to carry him through the rest of the school day, where he continued to slack off and do nothing but doodle scraps of rap lyrics in his notebook.

Once he was back at the safe house he ran into Slick, who scowled in his direction. “Don’t you have homework you should be doing?”

Fuck Dave’s luck. Slick rarely occupied the safe house himself and running into him was something Dave tried to avoid.

“Did you learn how to communicate with teenagers by memorizing a few lines out of an 80s parenting magazine?” Dave answered back, irritated as he hunted through the empty cabinets for food. “Because that’s what it sounds like to me.”

“Yeah,” Slick answered, biting down on a thick cigar. “I got the magazine from the same place that sold you the stick up your ass.”

Dave grinned at that. He could appreciate a fine comeback after all. “Hot damn,” he quipped shamelessly. “I hope you remember the name of the place. I think I need a bigger stick lodged up there—I’ve outgrown this one. Do you think they do exchanges?”

Slick put his head in his hands. “Just go do your damn homework,” he asked. “If you’re not going to be helpful I won’t give you the fuckin’ pleasure of sittin’ here tradin’ insults.”

“You want me to be helpful?” Dave asked. “Then give me a cellphone.”

Slick didn’t even consider it. “No.”

“Come on, man,” Dave protested. “Why not? I’ve been a good boy.”

“No, you have not,” Slick answered, glaring at him. “You’ve been a smug-ass little shitstain since I’ve met you, and you’re not getting a damn phone.”

“Why not?” Dave asked again, legitimately curious.

“Too risky,” Slick told him, grunting as he unfolded the town’s newspaper. “You might try to contact someone from back home.”

“Like who?” Dave challenged, his fingers twitchy. He snatched the lighter off the table just to give his hands something to do and Slick glared at him again. 

“Tell me why you want one,” Slick challenged right back, taking a long pull of his cigar.

Dave shrugged. “To text Karkat,” he said. 

Slick coughed around the smoke in his lungs, momentarily hacking as he got his breath back. “To what?” He asked weakly.

“Text Karkat,” he said again. “You know? Like a normal fucking person?”

“No,” Slick said, shaking his head. “No, no, no. You tell that kid too much about yourself as it is. The last thing I need to deal with is you self-incriminating yourself with a paper trail of text messages.”

“Fair point,” Dave shrugged. “The get me a car.”

Slick sputtered again, his eye bugging. He quickly controlled himself, staring at Dave. His eye was probing. “You’re a demanding little bastard for someone who’s given us next to nothing to work with.”

Dave threw up his hands. “I’m just offering solutions,” he said seriously. “You’re worried about me leaving a paper trail, so give me a car and I can drive over there myself and tell him all my secrets in person. That way there’s no proof for you to cover up.”

Slick stared at him, his mouth agape. “You’re fuckin’ impossible,” he muttered under his breath, turning away. “You know,” he said, louder. “It would be easier for everyone involved if you learned to keep your mouth shut.”

“Isn’t the point of this conversation about me not keeping my mouth shut?” Dave asked, turning the question around on him. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this. He felt bored and closed in and felt like throwing the feds a bone, just one, just enough to keep yanking them along with his bullshit. “That’s the only reason you’re putting up with me, isn’t it? To try and worm out more information?”

Slick was too professional to look interested. 

Dave baited him further. “Come on,” he teased. “One answer and you get me a burner phone pre-programmed for whatever nosy eavesdropping you’d like—text only. No calls, no data, no online capabilities. Full monitoring potential even, that way you can keep track of everything I do.”

Agent Slick pursed his thin lips. “Three answers,” he offered. “And you swear to use it only to text this Karkat fellow. Violations of that rule will result in immediate loss of phone privileges.”

“Three answers? Damn, you drive a hard bargain.” Dave held out his hand, the one that wasn’t holding onto the white Bic lighter. “Deal.”

Slick stared at him. “It cannot be that goddamn easy,” he growled. 

“Going once,” Dave warned, and Slick jumped forward to shake his hand, sealing the deal. “Better think fast,” Dave joked. “Three answers. What’ll help you out the most, I wonder?”

Slick appeared to be thinking very hard.

“Put you on the spot, did I,” Dave said, merciless. His face was emotionless. “Come on, come on, think faster. What do you want to goddamn know?”

“How specific will these answers be?” Slick questioned. “I want to know if they’ll be worth a phone or if you’ll just feed me more bullshit.”

“I promise to be both clear and concise,” Dave swore, the lighter spinning through his fingers. 

“How did Strider find his victims?” Slick asked, and he set his own phone face-up between them, the red camera light flashing as he recorded the conversation.

“Easy,” Dave scoffed. “Social media. Facebook, Instagram, any blogging site. People are careless about all the personal shit they post, and once he found someone he liked he’d hack them. He’d stalk them for weeks beforehand, memorize their routines, learn everything about them. He’d get in their computers, their phones, everything. He liked the feeling of a well-thought out plan going off without a hitch. He liked being in complete control. That was part of the thrill for him, planning everything down to the last inch.” Dave shut up, his hand in fists at his sides. “You have two questions left.”

“How many victims are we looking at?” Slick said, expressionless. He wanted names, dates, records, hard facts. 

Dave shrugged. “It took him around three months to find someone, plan everything out, and take them. That’s four people a year or so for my entire life, as far as I know, except when he did sprees or clusters. ‘Speedruns’ he called them. He only started doing those a few years ago and they throw off the data by a dozen or so. My closest guess and you’re looking at around 75 people.”

Slick let out the breath he’d been holding. The forgotten cigar was burning itself down between his fingers, shedding ash. 

“What was your number?” Dave asked silently. “Around 16? 22 maybe?”

The fed just stared at him wordlessly. 

“Last question,” Dave said, swallowing thickly. He felt feverishly hot as he betrayed his brother, but it wasn’t like Bro wasn’t going to kill him anyway, so why not go ahead and fuck him over while Dave still could?

“What is it that made you finally turn on him?” Slick asked. “If you knew for years, why’d you wait so long?”

Dave’s heart was pounding. He blinked behind his shades. “I won’t answer that,” he said. 

“You promised me three answers,” Slick reminded him, his voice hard.

“Keep your goddamn phone then,” Dave spit out, shaking. The lighter fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers. It clattered loudly to the floor. He gripped the tabletop to hold himself upright. His legs were shaking. He needed to get out of here. 

Slick seemed to understand he’d pushed too hard and backtracked. “Okay, okay, easy there,” he said gently, like Dave was an animal easily spooked. “If that topic’s off-limits I can just ask something else.”

“Do it,” Dave said, his voice clipped. He didn’t even try to argue. 

“The doctors said you’re pretty smart,” Slick said, begrudgingly complementing him. “Genius even. You remember any of these people’s names or faces? Anything at all that might help us identify a few missing persons?”

Dave took a deep breath and forced himself to focus, breathing hard. The room was swimming. “I remember everything. Faces are better than names—photographic memory, they told me.” Dave forced his hands to fall still. “Bring me a stack of missing person’s photos from Texas and I’ll see what I can do. Odds are I’ll recognize a few. Maybe that’ll help bring closure to a few grieving families, let them find some peace after the unending shitshow that went on in that apartment.” He shouldn’t have said that last part out loud, he knew, it made him sound soft, like he cared, but it had just slipped out. 

“That all?” Slick asked softly, reaching for his phone.

Dave nodded, his teeth chittering together. “You should have asked for the passwords to all this tech,” he said, expressionless. He felt hollowed out. His throat felt raw. “He kept everything stored on his computer.” 

Slick froze. “Kid,” he said seriously. “If he actually told you the passwords for his computer, I’d advise you tell me now.”

“You still got that shit in lockup?” Dave asked numbly. It was too easy to be cruel when he felt like this. “What? Can’t get past the encryptions? All that data and money and fancy tech and you can’t break into one homemade PC?”

“Dave!” Slick growled, using his name, letting him know shit was serious. 

“He never told me,” Dave flinched, breaking eye contact. “He never trusted me enough for that.”

Slick seemed to buy it. He reached out and cut off the recording, fiddling with his phone. “I’ll have those pictures ready for you by tomorrow afternoon,” he said, business-like. 

“I expect a phone by then,” Dave forced himself to speak. “Though honestly the picture thing should be worth a car.”

“Kid,” Slick sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “You just helped out our investigation more in ten minutes than we’ve been able to do on our own in the last five months. I want you to think about that. I want you to think about all the people you could help with what you know, and I want you to do the right thing and come clean to us. No more of this evasive, back-and-forth bullshit. I want you to help us be the good guys.”

Dave swallowed hard. His eyes felt watery but he was safe behind his shades. “I’ll do my best with the pictures,” he offered, and then he fled the room.

He sought refuge in the shower, the water turned to scalding. There was a stranger in the mirror watching him, but then Dave took off his shades and saw the same red eyes he’d grown up with staring back out at him. His stark black horribly dyed hair ghosted out what little color he had to his skin, and even though the feds had been feeding him well the angles of his face looked sharper, nearly gaunt.

Slick’s words burned at him and Dave mulled his last lines over in his head, wondering if good was something he could still be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor, poor Dave. I love him so much but the boy can't catch a break
> 
> Don't worry though-- he knows exactly what he's doing. 
> 
> Also..............DIRK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!


	5. chapter five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter is up! But beware-- shit gets kinda heavy in this one as Dave struggles with the ghosts of his past.

Dave found the phone waiting for him in the kitchen before school. It was an old beat-up flip phone and he eagerly swiped it and snapped it open. There was a yellow sticky note attached to it that read ‘Dave, don’t make me regret this’ in cramped handwriting.

Dave crumpled the note idly as he clicked through the old phone. There was a number set to home, with the name Spades Slick as the contact header. That was it. The rest of the phone was a blank slate. 

Dave couldn’t help but grin as he made his way down to the bus stop, slipping the phone into his pocket. He’d never had a phone before and the unfamiliar weight of it in his pocket was comforting. He was moving up in the world.

Dave barely held it together until lunch. Karkat and officer Johnson where chatting together as always. Karkat was eating some kind of pasta thing and for the first time he didn’t look slightly pissed off to see Dave saunter into the front office. 

“Hey Dave,” Karkat waved.

“Sup,” Dave said back, a warm feeling flooding his chest. He plopped down into the seat beside Karkat and nodded to the familiar policeman. “Don’t you get time off or something to go write people traffic tickets?” Dave asked curiously. “Or is the school your permanent position?”

“I’m always stationed here,” Johnson answered. “I received special training for the position.”

“Which is?” Dave inquired. 

“Protector of the school,” Johnson said proudly, puffing out his chest so that his badge shone. “Basically I make sure that Karkat’s alright and safe.” He didn’t say anything about the silver bullets Dave knew his gun was loaded with, instead bragging, “As long as I’m here no wackos should come after him.”

“Is that a valid concern?” Dave asked, stressed. “Random wackjobs with an anti-werewolf vendetta?”

“Kind of,” Karkat huffed. “It’s the downside to being publically known. A lot of crazies threaten to kill me for the greater good of humanity or some shit.” 

“That sucks ass,” Dave said, blinking, concern filling him. “Do people try to come after you a lot?”

Karkat shrugged, the movement small and miserable. “A few people have mailed silver powder bombs to my house,” he said. “Not that I’ve ever been stupid enough to open one, and once someone stuffed our mailbox full of wolfsbane; dad found that one and was pissed, but so far no one’s ever touched me.” Karkat’s eyes were grateful as he glanced at the police officer. “I’ve been lucky.”

All of Dave’s scars ached. “I’m sorry,” Dave said. “That sounds like it sucks.”

Karkat shrugged again. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m used to people trying to kill me.”

Because Dave was an idiot, he said, “me too,” without thinking, and then clammed up at Karkat’s shocked expression. Dave coughed, uncomfortable, and switched the subject, pulling out his new phone. “So,” he said lightly, flipping it open. “What’s your digits?”

Karkat eyed the flip phone with distrust. “What are you, a fucking drug dealer?” He asked, joking. “Who even uses flip phones now?”

“It’s the only kind Slick would let me have,” Dave defended himself, protective of his piece of shit phone. Right now it was the only physical thing he actually owned. Dave tapped at the keyboard, opening his contacts. “They can’t be traced like most phones and this one’s been disconnected from the web. It’s text and call only, safe as can be.”

Karkat gazed at him. His eyes were piercing at the reminder that Dave was supposed to be in hiding, that he had people after him too. Dave met his eyes behind his shades, steady. The moment burned between them. 

“Here,” Karkat said softly, reaching for the phone. Dave let him take it and enter in his information. “I don’t really use my phone much,” he commented. “I only really use it for emergencies and googling shit. Apps and things like that.” He handed the phone back to Dave, biting his lip. “I’m not sure why you want my number,” he admitted. “Don’t you get enough of my dreadful personality while at school?”

“Naw,” Dave said, smirking as he felt a thrill of glee at the sight of Karkat’s number in his phone. “I actually like talking with you, you know?”

Karkat looked away and Dave could see his ears turning scarlet. He didn’t tease Karkat for his embarrassment. Dave was too happy for that. 

Johnson rolled his eyes. “Great,” he said. “I give it three days before the pair of you get busted for texting in class.”

Dave looked wounded, dramatically fanning himself. “Three days?” He echoed. “I’m insulted. I wouldn’t give me to the end of last period.”

“Don’t make me regret giving you my number,” Karkat warned. “I have a spotless behavior record at this school and I won’t let you fuck that up.”

“Okay,” Dave said, agreeing as he opened the world’s shittiest phone camera on his flip phone to toggle with the settings. 

Karkat looked surprised. “Really? It was that easy?”

“Sure,” Dave said, showing him a real smile and not a shit-eating grin as he said, gently, “I can respect boundaries, you know. I’m not a total asshole.”

Karkat softened, losing the hard set to his jaw. “I’ll try to remember that,” he said, nudging Dave gently with his elbow. “Though you could do with dropping the asshole act every now and again.”

Dave felt something warm and fluttery shoot through him at the contact and gulped. “I’ll try to remember that,” he said, and he turned the shitty phone camera on himself and snapped a pic just to help try and capture that feeling, to bottle it up for later, to make it his, to remind himself that he was still capable of feeling like this. 

…

Dave grew more and more anxious as the hours passed and school began to draw to a close. He could only imagine the mess that would be waiting for him back at the safe house, and he put one hand in his pocket to feel the weight of his phone, telling himself he’d done the right thing.

Karkat must have noticed something off with his expression in History class, but he didn’t say anything until the teacher had dismissed them before the bell. “You okay?” He asked, looking concerned. 

Dave shrugged, listless. He felt like pacing the floor. “I’ve got to do some stuff for Slick this afternoon and I’m kind of dreading it. Like, court-case stuff.” It was close enough to the truth for Dave to feel like he was getting away with the partial honesty. 

Karkat paused, but he knew better than to ask for details in the middle of a classroom. “Will you be alright?” He asked. 

Dave forced a smile. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “We’re just going over some shit I don’t like to be reminded of.” Karkat was still staring at him so Dave elaborated a little. “It gets in my head, makes me feel weird. I don’t like it.”

“Okay,” Karkat nodded, unsatisfied, then, shyly, “Will you text me afterward? To make sure you’re okay?”

Dave perked up, the bell ringing overhead. “Of course,” he said, nodding. He wasn’t sure why but the idea of talking to Karkat later was instantly calming. “I can text you, sure thing.” He stood up, grabbing his bag from off the floor as they headed to the bus. 

“I’d invite you over to the board office to talk, but,” Karkat trailed away, taking his usual seat. 

“Yeah,” Dave responded, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not today.”

Karkat was still looking at him like he was waiting for Dave to ramble on, but no other words followed him. “You’ve been quiet today,” Karkat mentioned. “This thing must really be bothering you.”

“It’s…” Now it was Dave’s turn to trail off as he ended with a lame, “It’s complicated.”

Karkat frowned, his mouth pulled tight at the edges. 

“S’okay,” Dave said as the bus pulled up to the board office. “We all have shit we’ve got to deal with.”

Karkat gave him one last look before standing up. “Okay then,” he said. “I’ll see you later, Dave. Good luck.”

Dave nodded wordlessly as he watched his friend leave. His belly was tied in knots as the bus approached the drop off point for the safe house, and when he got off the bus the sound of the dry grass on the side of the road crinkling under his shoes was the loudest sound in the world. The bus pulled away in a gust of hot air and exhaust fumes. Dave could see Slick waiting on the porch, standing with one shoulder leaned against the doorframe.

Dave gave a small, half-hearted wave, steeling himself as he walked up to the door.

For some reason Slick was already pissed at him. “What’s the use of a damn phone if you’re not gonna stay in touch with me?”

Dave looked surprised. “What?”

“I have been textin’ you for the past hour, you deviant,” Slick said, growling. “Anyway, I hope you’re fucking ready for this. The rest of the crew is here so I expect you to be on your fuckin’ best behavior, understood?”

Dave felt some of his fire come back just enough to snap, “I will if they will.”

Slick didn’t look happy, but he moved aside so Dave could slink through the door. Three men stood around the table, dressed in all black aside from the one who wore the vest of a Federal Marshall. One was tall, one was big, and one was so short and round that Dave couldn’t help but wonder who had let this guy be a cop.

“Dave,” Slick said, introducing the other men. “Meet the rest of my team. Droog, our brains,” here the tall man with black eyes dipped his thin face in a nod. “Boxcars, the muscle,” Slick said, and the big guy build like a fucking freight train nodded wordlessly. Seriously, this man probably bench pressed dumpsters in his spare time. “And Deuce, the equipment guy,” Slick said, waving to the tiny man in the vest.

Dave didn’t say anything. His mouth was dry. He could see the hundreds of carefully laid out photographs that covered the tabletop behind them.

Slick spoke again, his voice remarkably soft. “Dave,” he said. “Just try your best. There’s no pressure. I know this might be hard for you but think of how much good it’ll do.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dave said, pushing past him to get at the table. “Let’s just get this over with.”

He approached the table with trepidation. Every picture was a headshot, a clattering mix of professional work pictures and candid moments. There were just so many of them that they all blurred together into a colorful patchwork quilt across the tabletop. He didn’t even know where to start, this was an impossible task, there had to be three hundred photos here. “These are all from Texas?” Dave asked numbly. Everywhere he looked he saw another face staring up at him.

“Within three hundred miles of Houston,” Slick said, coughing. “We thought that was a good place to start.”

Dave nodded, forcing his gaze to the first picture, thinking of this more as a puzzle to solve and forcefully ignoring the fact that each of these people had been reported missing. He wet his dry lips. “How many are there?”

“Thousands from just the past five years,” Slick said, and he lit a cigar but didn’t bring it to his mouth. Dave felt sick. “But I thought we could start slow. This is only a few hundred.”

Could he do this? Could Dave really pick out the familiar faces from this confusing menagerie? He tried to go back to the first photo, to take this row by row, methodically one by one, but already his gaze was being drug away, zeroing in on a picture of a woman with long red hair and freckles. He touched the picture and felt the stickiness of the glossy photo paper stick to his sweaty fingers. Dave turned it over just enough to see the data printed on the back but didn’t read any of it. He didn’t want to know her name. “This is an old picture,” he said, his voice hoarse. “She had cropped her hair short just a few days before it happened.”

Slick took the photograph from him and turned it over, scanning the back before he handed it to Deuce, who immediately began typing away on a compact and high-tech laptop. “Can you verify this?” He asked seriously. 

“Got it,” Deuce said, hunching over the monitor. “Affirmative boss. No pictures, but there’s a Facebook post about a new hairstyle on her page dated three days before she was reported missing.”

Dave closed his eyes. He could see his pulse on the backs of his eyelids as he leaned over the table. When he opened them he saw Slick staring at him.

“You okay, kid?” The agent asked, his gruff smoker’s voice softer than Dave had ever heard it before.

Dave pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yeah,” he forced out, breathing hard. He went back to the pictures, quickly scanning over them and immediately discarding the kids. Bro might have been an immoral sociopath, but his work was strictly 18 and above. So many missing children. Dave could feel his teeth grinding together as he stared at their faces. 

It didn’t take long for him to get another hit, recognition hitching barbs out of his frontal lobe as he found familiar features. An older businessman, weak jawline with balding sideburns. It took Dave a second to recognize him without the blood that had coated his face, but Dave was sick with certainty as he wordlessly handed the photo to Slick, not meeting his eyes. 

Dave went back to work. He fell into a rhythm, scanning each photograph carefully before moving to the next. Whenever he felt that jolt of recognition and saw the face of one of Bro’s victims he’d hand the photo over to Slick. When he was done with all the pictures on the table he moved onto the ones that had been spread across the countertop, completely focused as he hunted through the sea of faces. 

Deuce had assembled a stack of tagged photos by the time Dave was done, and Dave didn’t need to ask to know the final count. The number felt branded in his mind as he watched the man slide the 22 photos into an envelope and seal it. 

“I’m sorry,” Dave said out loud to no one in particular. The whole room was staring at him. His hands were shaking again. “I didn’t see all of them that he brought back, just those.”

“You did just fine, kid,” Slick reassured him, working his jaw like he was trying to find the right words. 

Droog looked impassive. “How can we be sure that Dave identified them correctly?”

Slick sighed. “Kid,” he asked, looking at Dave. “You saw Deuce when you walked in, right?”

“Yeah,” Dave shrugged. “So?”

“So tell me his badge number,” Slick asked. 

Dave didn’t even have to think about it. “001834628374”

Deuce turned around and took his badge off, squinting at the small numbers. “Say that again.”

Dave repeated the numbers slowly, and Deuce nodded at Slick. “That’s exactly right.”

“See?” Slick told Droog while Boxcars just stared ahead like he was looking for something to crush between his teeth. “What did I say? The kid’s gifted.” Slick motioned to the envelope of chosen pictures. “If he says Strider killed those people, I fuckin’ believe him.”

Dave just swallowed thickly. 

“But will it hold up in court?” Droog asked. 

“He’s our star and only witness,” Slick argued, gruff as he took a drag of his cigar. “It’ll hold up.”

Dave didn’t want to stand around and listen to the feds argue legal schematics. That wasn’t his job. “Can I… can I go now?” He asked, trying to keep his voice from wavering and only failing a little. 

Slick nodded and before he could open his mouth to talk Dave had slipped out of the room. He made his way to the small bedroom he now occupied and sank onto the unmade bed like his legs couldn’t hold him up for any longer. His fingers were shaking as he fished his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open.

He did have a few texts from someone called SS that he ignored, hitting Karkat’s name in his contact list.

Dave: yo karkat its me  
Dave: wyd

The reply was almost instant

Karkat: DAVE?  
Karkat: HOW ARE YOU DOING? HOW DID THAT THING GO?

Dave bit his lip as he typed out a response. 

Dave: it went and its over for now  
Dave: but i dont really know how to feel about it except that i would never like to do it again because i was hitting new levels of suck  
Karkat: WAS IT THAT BAD?  
Dave: yes  
Karkat: DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT?  
Dave: maybe but im not sure legally how much i can explain without resorting to weird metaphors and far-fetched parallels that make no fucking sense  
Dave: its like…  
Dave: god i would never ask this to you if i were thinking clearly but im kind of freaking the fuck out rn so ill go ahead and say it but feel free to tell me to go fuck myself for being an insensitive douchebag if you dont feel like answering  
Dave: have you ever seen the footage of the skaia high attack when you first turned?

Dave knew that the unexpected turn of the conversation had caught Karkat off guard and he watched those three little dots pop up, then disappear, then pop up again. It took a long time for Karkat to answer him.

Karkat: I HAVE. JUST ONCE. I WANTED TO SEE WHAT IT HAD LOOKED LIKE TO EVERYONE ELSE. I WANTED TO KNOW HOW THE WORLD HAD VIEWED ME THAT DAY.  
Karkat: HAVE YOU SEEN IT?

Dave answered him honestly. 

Dave: no  
Dave: not beyond the hallway clips that the news showed and i dont want to either  
Dave: but watching that, knowing what you did and seeing the results of it in your face like that… how did it feel?

This time Karkat’s answer was faster.

Karkat: LIKE SHIT.  
Karkat: LIKE THE WORST SHIT YOU COULD IMAGINE.  
Dave: i can imagine some pretty bad shit and i know your shits up the rector scale of awful shit but i think i just learned first-hand how that feels and i can agree with you  
Dave: it absolutely does feel like shit

There was a pause, then,

Karkat: DAVE, WHAT’S GOING ON WITH YOU?  
Karkat: AND DON’T GIVE ME A BULLSHIT DEFLECTION OR LIE THIS TIME. I UNDERSTAND IF YOU CAN’T TELL ME OR DON’T WANT TO AND I’M NOT FORCING YOU TO SPILL YOUR SECRETS, BUT I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I’M HERE IF YOU EVER NEED TO TALK. 

Dave knew he was breaking the rules but he couldn’t bring himself to give a shit as he typed out,

Dave: you know how im in witness protection?  
Karkat: YEAH.  
Dave: well…  
Dave: what do you know about how wit sec works?  
Karkat: I KNOW THEY HELP HIDE AND PROTECT PEOPLE WHO ARE TESTIFYING IN COURT CASES THAT PUT THEIR LIVES IN DANGER. I KNOW THAT THEY’RE OFTEN WITNESSES TO CRIMES OR HAVE INSIDER INFORMATION THAT COULD MAKE THE BIG CASES AND PUT BAD GUYS AWAY FOR LIFE.  
Karkat: IS THAT WHY YOU’RE WITH THEM? YOU MENTIONED A COURT CASE EARLIER TODAY. DID YOU SEE SOMETHING YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO?  
Dave: you could say that  
Karkat: AND YOU’RE GOING TO TESTIFY?

Dave looked away from his phone screen, staring blankly at the wall. He could hear the feds arguing from the living room, their voices echoing through the thin walls.

“He’s just a kid!” Slick was saying. “He’s only 16 and you know what he fuckin’ went through. Cut him some slack.”

“Five months,” came Droog’s voice. “He’s been sitting on this for five goddamn months! If he’s that fucking smart then I know that he knows the answer for everything we fucking need, Spades.”

Dave answered Karkat with his heart in his throat. 

Dave: ill try to  
Dave: but  
Dave: things might not work out the way you think  
Karkat: I DON’T CARE.  
Karkat: DAVE… THAT’S ONE OF THE FUCKING BRAVEST THINGS I CAN THINK OF A PERSON DOING. IF YOU’RE GOING UP AGAINST SOME KIND OF VILLAIN EVEN AS THEY TRY TO HUNT YOU DOWN, FUCK, THAT’S GODDAMN HEROIC. 

Dave turned away from the screen. He could bear to look at those words as he heard Slick defend him from the living room.

“Droog, give it a rest, will ya?” Slick demanded, getting angry again. His voice was getting louder. “The kid’s my responsibility alright? And I fuckin’ know pushing him for answers will get us jack shit—we’ve got to let him come to us on his own.”

“Out of what?” Droog sneered. “The goodness of his heart? He only did this for us today because he gained something from it!”

Dave looked back at the cell phone in his hand, his knuckles turning white from how tightly he was gripping it. 

Dave: no  
Dave: im not being heroic. thats not right. i did something, karkat, something that put me into this mess and it sure as fuck wasnt heroic  
Karkat: I’M NOT SURE I BELIEVE THAT.  
Karkat: WIT SEC WOULDN’T BE PROTECTING YOU IF THERE WASN’T A GOOD REASON FOR IT.  
Dave: why not? Its not like my lifes worth anything to them without the dirt they know i have on a certain person  
Karkat: IS THAT WHY SOMEONE IS AFTER YOU? BECAUSE YOU HAVE DIRT ON THEM AND THEY THINK YOU’RE GOING TO TESTIFY AGAINST THEM IN COURT?  
Dave: partly  
Dave: but its more complicated than that. god i wish it were that fucking simple  
Dave: but every time i try to think about what happened i keep coming to the exact same conclusion  
Karkat: WHICH IS?

Dave heard Boxcars grunt something unintelligible out in a voice like boulders breaking to try and keep the peace, but Slick spoke over him. “He doesn’t trust us yet. We just need to give him more time.”

“He’s a manipulative, controlling asshole who’s only looking out for himself,” Droog fired back. “You give him way too much credit, Spades. Look at how he was raised… do you really think that kid has a fucking conscience?”

Dave forced his attention back to the conversation he was having, typing out the answer he’d been dreading.

Dave: i did a bad thing for selfish reasons.  
Dave: and now im paying the price.  
Dave: ive got to go, ill talk to you tomorrow ok?  
Karkat: OKAY. GOODNIGHT DAVE. I’M SORRY IF I ASKED TOO MANY QUESTIONS.  
Dave: no its ok  
Dave: night karkat

Dave flipped the phone closed and took a deep breath as he heard the fight in the living room die down as the other feds left. Dave heard them stomping out on the porch and down the drive. He heard Slick still moving around the kitchen and smelled the heavy scent of tobacco in the air. He gave Slick a few minutes to calm down before Dave took to his feet and silently walked back out into the living area.

Slick’s back was turned as he typed furiously on his laptop. A cloud of smoke wreathed around his head over where he’d pulled his hat low over his brow. 

Dave deliberately shifted his weight so that the floorboards under him creaked and Slick spun around, one hand instinctively going for his bare hip before he saw Dave standing there.

“Jesus Christ,” Slick gasped as he quickly let his hand drop back to his side. “Don’t sneak up on me. I’m too old and trigger-happy for that.”

Dave just shrugged. 

Slick looked at him oddly. “Why are you standing here like that?”

“Like what?” Dave asked, swallowing thickly. 

“Like you have something you want to say,” Slick said, taking off his hat to let it hand of the rack by the front door. He didn’t push, didn’t try to probe the information out. He just gave Dave the space to ease into it on his own.

“I didn’t do it for a phone,” Dave told him flatly, expressionless. A tremor ran through his jaw. “I just thought you should know.”

Slick nodded slowly, cautiously, like he was trying not to scare Dave away. He didn’t say anything else. 

Neither did Dave, and now that their impasse had started to fracture Dave couldn’t see the bottom of the pit he’d dug himself into.

Slick nodded again, his jaw working. “We need to redye your hair,” he said at last, staring at Dave. “Your roots are starting to show.”

Now freed, Dave nodded wordlessly and left the room with a gritty taste in his mouth. He didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Its hard being a kid and growing up  
Its hard and nobody understands
> 
> Poor Dave. I promise this next chapter will make things better for him


	6. chapter six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beep beep new chapter and its a long one :)
> 
> Did someone ask for.... FLUFF???????????

Dave enjoyed the mornings when the bus got to the school a little earlier than normal. He liked having a few minutes before class started to seek out Karkat at his locker to bother him since Dave and Karkat’s schedules didn’t link up aside from Lunch break and History class. 

Dave found Karkat on the bench beside the bank of lockers, his nose buried in another paperback, so absorbed in his reading that the rest of the world had fallen away from him. He didn’t even notice Dave sit beside him at the other end of the bench. 

Dave watched him read as the other students filed past, chatting to themselves. Karkat sat in a bubble of his own creation as he turned the page of his book. Dave watched his eyes trace across the letters, watched the micro expressions flit across Karkat’s face as he read along. 

The sight did strange things to Dave’s chest. He was utterly engrossed with watching Karkat read. Like this his face was soft and open, worry-free, the stress lines between his eyebrows erased. 

Then the bell rang overhead and Karkat looked up and made eye contact with Dave, who was still openly staring at him. 

Dave didn’t look away. He wasn’t sure what his face was doing but he hadn’t felt this relaxed in weeks. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Karkat said back. He slipped his book back into his backpack. 

Dave didn’t say anything else as he and Karkat parted ways for morning classes, but as Dave took a seat in Math and had his midterm exam sat in front of him, he couldn’t stop dwelling on that few second span that had made his heart beat faster. 

Dave glanced down at his exam. Solve for x. He picked up his pencil, feeling light and strangely optimistic as he destroyed the exam within fifteen minutes. This was one of the two tests he couldn’t fuck up, so Dave devoted a few minutes of attention to the equations and felt pretty damn confident that he’d blown the test out of the water. He only wrote down as much work as he judged was acceptable to not get points taken off and turned the test in early. 

The teacher stared disapprovingly at him as he set the exam on her desk, probably because he hadn’t gotten higher than a c in her class yet. She must of thought he’d bullshitted the test, but honestly Dave didn’t care. He couldn’t wait until lunch. 

When his morning classes ended and the lunch bell finally rang Dave had to restrain himself from walking in a jog down to the front office. He pushed the doors open, saw Karkat, and was immediately intercepted by the Principal, who held out an arm to stop him from passing his side office. 

“Hey,” Dave greeted the man distractedly. 

“Jac—Dave,” The man said, correcting himself. “Can I see you in my office for a minute?”

Dave could feel Karat staring at him and nodded, shrugging. “Okay, but like, this is my only time to eat food before PE and if I don’t get in enough calories before then I might actually wither away.”

“This shouldn’t take long,” the Principal promised. 

Dave wandered errantly into the office. The Principal closed the door behind him, looking serious. Dave almost asked what was wrong before he spotted his math exam on the desk top, his name neatly printed at the top.

Principal Warren sat down at his desk and motioned to the exam. “Care to explain this?”

“I didn’t cheat,” Dave said, cutting to the point. He knew what this was about. He put his hands in his pockets and didn’t sit down in the offered chair. 

“I didn’t say you did,” Warren said, leaning back. “Mrs. Tally told me you finished this hour and a half long test within a few minutes.”

“So?” Dave asked, resolved to difficult about this. 

“So she graded it,” Warren told him. “100%. That’s kind of suspicious you have to admit. The class records show you failing everything else. Your current class grade is a D. Care to explain why that is?”

Dave shrugged. “I’m good at math.”

“Your grades say otherwise,” Warren explained patiently, like he was waiting for a confession.

It pissed Dave off. He motioned to the test lying between them. “Clearly my grades show my fucking competence in the subject. A D isn’t failing and I’m sure that 100% will help my so-called poor grade out a lot.”

“Language,” Warren reminded him. “No cursing in my office, Dave, or I’ll have to write you up. That was your only warning, and as for the grade,” he reached out with a pen and marked through the 100 written at the top of the paper. “I’m afraid we can’t accept this. Cheating is a serious offense, Dave.”

“I didn’t fucking cheat,” Dave said, stressing the expletive. He was pretty pissed off but didn’t want to show it. 

“And that’s detention for the language,” Warren said, pulling the pink slip out of his desk to fill out.

“Fine,” Dave shrugged. “But I didn’t fucking cheat.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

Warren put down his pen, his frown severe. “Dave—”

Dave interrupted him. “You don’t even have any fucking proof that I cheated, and I want that 100 back because I fucking earned it fair and square.”

“Did you study?”

“No.”

“Then there’s no way you earned this grade without cheating,” Warren told him. “You’re in Advanced Algebra, Dave. There’s just no way that a 100% is a reasonable exam grade.” His eyes narrowed. “And make that a week’s worth of detention.”

“Fine,” Dave said again. “I don’t fucking care about your stupid detentions, but I didn’t. Fucking. Cheat.” Dave watched the man’s mouth narrow into a thin, displeased line, and said. “Listen, call Mrs. Tally up here. Her second string of math kids take their exam in the afternoon and it’s an entirely different test than the one she gives us. Let me take that one right here, right now. I can fucking prove that I didn’t cheat.” Dave shifted his weight from one foot to the other, seething. It was rare for him to get angry, but a sure fire way to piss Dave off was by accusing him of being an awful person outside of his carefully crafted façade of being an awful person. That was the shit Dave took personal. 

“Are you claiming that you can succeed in taking this second exam?” Warren asked suspiciously. “Right now with no prep time and two teachers making sure you don’t have any electronic help?”

“I am,” Dave lifted his chin in stubborn challenge.

Warren nodded and reached for the intercom system, calling Dave’s math teacher up to his office. “Mrs. Tilly?” He spoke into the microphone. “Can you come up here for a second? And bring a new midterm exam with you.”

It only took a minute or two for the teacher to make it to the office, holding a sheath of papers. She gave Dave a disapproving glare when she spotted him lurking in the room.

“Here,” She gave the Principal the exam. She knew what was up just as much as Dave had. “This isn’t the same test as before. Same content, different questions.”

“Alright,” Warren said, sliding the paper over towards Dave. “Take as long as you need. No phones.”

Dave fished his cell phone out of his pocket and placed it on the desk. Warren gave him an incredulous look when he spotted the old flip phone. “What?” Dave defended himself. “That shit doesn’t even have a calculator on it. I couldn’t cheat with that if I wanted too.” Dave took a seat, sliding the chair up close to Warren’s desk. “I need a pen.”

Warren handed him one out of his breast pocket, something shiny and metal that Dave made up his mind about stealing. “Here.” 

Dave took the pen as Mrs. Tally handed him a calculator, which Dave sat face-down on the desktop beside his phone, resolved to not so much as touch the device.

Dave began the second exam under the eyes of both adults. He took his time with the first problem, carefully showing every scrap of work, even the simple shit, to prove that he understood the concepts. It took him about ten minutes just to write everything out, and then he circled the answer and moved to the next question.

This time he showed absolutely zero work. He simply wrote x=-4.5 and immediately moved onto the next question without pause.

The math teacher made an angry noise behind him but Dave ignored her. These equations were like puzzles to him, and every part he could easily hold in him mind and solve out. It helped that once he had an answer he could just plug it back into the regional problem to check if it worked out, which it always did. He never fucking touched the calculator. 

He finished the last of the 16 questions with ease even though the last problem was the hard one, one with simplifying fraction and that was a bitch to solve without work or a calculator even for Dave, but he got his answer and neatly printed it down. He slide the test back to Principal Warren. “Done.”

The lunch bell rang before Mrs. Tally had finished quickly grading the exam, but Dave didn’t move.

She tapped her finger over the first problem. “This one is correct,” she said, shaking her head. “But it’s the only one you showed your work with.”

“Just trying to prove I can do it your way,” Dave said back, expressionless. 

“The rest are… also correct,” Mrs. Tally admitted, glancing at him with confusion. “But you didn’t use a calculator or show any work.”

“I showed all of my work on the first exam,” Dave shrugged. “I guess I just didn’t feel like it this time.”

Warren blinked, his face sallow as he looked at the exam. “And you’re sure these answers are correct?”

Mrs. Tally nodded, looking shocked. “They are, but that should be impossible.”

They both turned to look at Dave. He stared impassively back.

Warren cleared his throat. “I was told aside from your reading level that you had at best a fourth-grade education,” he said, coughing.

Dave shrugged again, insulted. Bro might have pulled him from school after fourth grade but that didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten an education. “Homeschool doesn’t equal no school. I’m not fucking stupid.” He picked his flip phone up and put it in his pocket along with the pen he was stealing out of spite. “This was a nice chat we had,” Dave said, standing up. “I think we all learned a valuable lesson about making assumptions and discriminatory judgement calls against students. Now, if you don’t mind I’d like to get back to class. We’re through here.”

Warren sighed and carefully tore the pink detention slip he’d written Dave up on in half.

“That’s not an apology,” Dave pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“No, but it’s a start,” Warren said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “Now get to class, Dave. You’ll get the grade you received on the first exam.” He called out again just before Dave could make it through the door. “And I expect higher grades from you from now!”

“Piss off,” Dave shot back, ducking through the door, still seething. He didn’t like feeling like this, cagey, like this school was too small to hold him. He flicked the stolen pen into the trashcan in the hallway as he made his way back to class.

“You’re late,” his teacher exclaimed as he slid into his empty desk. 

Dave took a deep breath to steady himself, forcing himself to act nice. “You can thank Principal Warren for that,” he said, volatile. 

The class droned on and one. Dave flinched when the nasal bell rang overhead, jumpy inside his skin as he filed through class after class, focusing on none of them. 

It was official—Dave was having a bad day. He didn’t even really have the chance to talk to Karkat in History because the lesson dragged on until the bell rang. 

“What happened to you during lunch?” Karkat asked as they walked to the bus.

Dave put his hands in his pockets. “I made a 100% on my Algebra midterm and they thought I cheated on it,” he shortened the story to its basics. “Don’t worry, I got it sorted out. It just took a long fucking time.”

“You made a one hundred?” Karkat’s eyebrows raised. “Damn. I was hoping for a 90 at best.”

Dave shrugged as he took his seat. “I’m good at math,” he offered. “Math makes sense. It’s easy, like a puzzle that has all of the pieces already in the question.”

“Math is hard as fuck,” Karkat complained. “Especially Algebra. Once they started putting the alphabet in equations my mind refused to make sense of things.” He gave Dave an appreciative look as the bus pulled up to the board office. His eyes were teasing. “One hundred, huh? Maybe I should get you to tutor me.”

Dave spread his hands. “I’m up for that,” he said, slightly happier at the idea of spending more time with Karkat. “I’m sure I can get you making those 100’s in no time.”

“We can talk later,” Karkat promised, leaving the bus. “See you, Dave.”

Dave was feeling much lighter now, his miasma dissolving in the sunlight that poured through the bus window as it drove him back to the safe house. Dave felt even better once he actually got inside the building to realize that Slick wasn’t there. He was alone in the small house and his spirit soared. 

The he spotted the Walmart bags Slick had left on the table and curiosity struck him. He dug through the shopping bags, rummaging through food and basic supplies like paper. He idly tore open a bag of chips and set to eating the entire thing before Slick could return to tell him not to. He set to organizing the new foods in the cabinet by color. He left the papers and other boxes on the table as he unearthed staples, toilet paper, and highlighters. Then he found the box of hair dye and his eager hunting fell flat. 

Dave studied the small package. The guy on the front was smiling and his hair was a sleek, natural black, not the old shoe polish color of Dave’s. He remembered Slick’s words and wandered into his bathroom to have a look at himself.

In the mirror he could easily make out his natural hair color coming through at the roots. He supposed it was getting kind of obvious, his hair had always grown fast and it certainly needed a trim, and logic dictated the necessity of more black dye. 

Here was the thing thought—Dave actively hated how his hair currently looked. He could barely stand to look at himself and just the sight of his natural roots peeking through the black made his heart lift only to be crushed back by the realization that the color would soon be smothered out again. 

He stared hard at his pale roots, running his hand through his hair to watch the color shine through in the dull overhead lights. He stared hard at the box of hair dye, fighting the urge to flush the contents down the toilet. He set the box down on the bathroom counter and stared at himself again, then at the box, then back at his hair. 

It was an easy decision to come to. Dave simply did not want to put that black gunk in his hair again. 

Spades Slick would certainly expect Dave to put the black gunk in his hair again, and if Dave refused it was too easy for him to see the consequences. There would certainly be screaming, that was for sure.

Dave bit his lip, deliberating. He left the box in the bathroom. His good mood had evaporated. The chips sat abandoned on the table, only half-eaten. 

Dave felt listless and wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He was already dreading the confrontation with Slick, and there were probably a lot of hours between now and when the fed got back for Dave’s anxiety to make the situation a thousand times worse. 

He didn’t feel hungry anymore. He hated the feeling of waiting. It reminded him of the few times a month that Bro had left the apartment. When Dave had been younger such occasions were cause for celebration, but that was back when Dirk had been there and they’d play videogames on the flatscreen and take turns daring each other to open the fridge. After Dave had turned 13 and he’d been left alone the dread of such lonely occasions had set in. He could never be sure if Bro had simply gone out to get more food for the apartment or if he’d gone out to bring some poor fucker back for his sick videos when Dave had sat on the ratty sofa with black dread eating a hole through his stomach lining until he’d thrown up from nerves. 

And then Bro would come back with Taco Bell and call Dave a pussy and it was up to the rooftop with a pair of swords to try and beat some toughness into him. Those were the good endings. The bad ones ended with Bro bringing someone back with him, drugged and wounded, and then they would vanish into the back room where the cameras were set up and Dave would throw up again when he heard the screams. 

He wasn’t dumb enough to think Slick would dare try anything similar with him, but that couldn’t erase the trickle of fear in the back of Dave’s mind as time wore on. 

To distract himself, Dave texted Karkat. It was getting late but he didn’t care. He needed the semblance of something normal right now.

Dave: yo karkat are you there?  
Karkat: DAVE?  
Dave: yeah its me  
Dave: and btw why the fuck do you type in all caps?  
Karkat: I DON’T KNOW, WHY DO YOU TYPE IN ALL LOWERCASE?  
Dave: ok fair point i guess why question the idiosyncratic nature of our text talk? if it aint broke dont fix it  
Dave: but anyway  
Dave: wyd?  
Karkat: CLEANING UP AFTER DINNER, WHY?  
Dave: oh neat yes thats perfect  
Dave: nice and ordinary  
Karkat: DAVE? IS EVERYTHING OKAY? YOU’RE BEING WEIRD AGAIN.  
Dave: probably im pretty sure im just freaking out over nothing and making things a federal fucking issue like i always do i fuckin guess so i was just really interested in hearing about how your absolutely normal afternoon went  
Karkat: OH. OKAY THEN LET’S SEE.  
Karkat: I CAME HOME FROM THE BOARD OFFICE WITH MY DAD, FINISHED UP MY HOMEWORK, DID A BIT OF READING AND HOUSEWORK, AND THEN WE HAD DINNER TOGETHER. I’M CLEANING UP THE DISHES NOW.  
Dave: whatd you have?  
Karkat: MEATLOAF. ITS MY DAD’S FAVORITE AND I’M PRETTY SURE WE HAVE IT ONCE A WEEK.  
Karkat: I’M GETTING SICK OF MEATLOAF, DAVE, BUT WHAT CAN I DO? HE LIKES IT.  
Dave: anything else?  
Karkat: CORN. I FIXED US SOME CORN WITH IT.  
Dave: anything to drink? sweet tea maybe?  
Karkat: WHAT NO. DAVE YOUR SOUTHERNER IS SHOWING, NO ONE DRINKS THAT SUGARY SHIT UP HERE.  
Dave: heathen  
Dave: blasphemy  
Dave: what kind of hellish place doesnt have fucking sweet tea?  
Karkat: MOST PLACES IN AMERICA DON’T HAVE SWEET TEA DUMBASS.  
Dave: oh shit really? thats like a thing?  
Karkat: YEAH?  
Dave: no wonder im suffering from a lack of actually drinkable beverages—all that you have up here is fucking coke  
Karkat: YOU MEAN SODA?  
Dave: dammit!  
Karkat: AS HILARIOUS AS IT IS TO LISTEN TO YOU BITCH ABOUT NORMAL MIDWESTERN THINGS I HAVE TO ASK, AND THIS IS STRICTLY OUT OF CONCERN FOR YOU… WHAT HAS YOU FREAKING OUT LIKE THIS?  
Dave: its nothing important  
Dave: like i know im being a shithead about this but slick brought back hair dye today to fix up where my roots are starting to show and for some fucked up reason my brain has decided that id rather fucking die than have that godawful color anywhere near my head again  
Dave: and i fucking know that slick will fight me on this and im just not looking forward to the confrontation brewing because for all of my bullshit bravado im really sort of freaking the fuck out about it  
Dave: i hate it karkat i dont even look like myself anymore  
Dave: i know thats kind of the point but…  
Dave: out of all the things that i had to give up i never agreed to myself being one of them, you know?  
Dave: changing my name was bad enough, but fucking with my hair? thats crossing the line  
Dave: i didnt even really agree to the color change the first time it happened. i think i was in shock at the time and in no mental space to argue and it just sort of happened?  
Dave: and now its something i have to live with and i hate it  
Karkat: OKAY WAIT. LET ME SEE IF I’M UNDERSTANDING YOU.  
Karkat: THE CORE OF THE MATTER IS THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO DYE YOUR HAIR AGAIN BUT KNOW THAT YOUR FEDERAL AGENT PERSON WILL MOST LIKELY TRY TO FORCE YOU TOO? AND THAT’S MAKING YOU UNCOMFORTABLE?  
Dave: yeah i guess  
Dave: congrats man you just summed it up far better than i ever could  
Karkat: DAVE, I’M SORRY, BUT YOU KNOW THAT YOUR AGENT IS PROBABLY RIGHT ABOUT THIS.  
Dave: youre only saying that because you dont like to break the rules  
Karkat: NO? I’M SAYING IT BECAUSE SOME FUCKING LUNATIC IS TRYING TO KILL YOU AND MAYBE MAKING YOURSELF HARD TO FIND IS A GOOD FUCKING IDEA?  
Dave: i know i know but why does it have to be that color? i just hate that they turned me into someone im not  
Dave: and i only just realized what an insensitive douchebag im being because you both have black hair and lycanthropy so lets just chalk that last sentence up to me being a godawful person  
Karkat: WELL AT LEAST YOU HAVE THE SELF-AWARENESS TO UNDERSTAND THAT WAS A SHITTY THING TO SAY TO ME.  
Dave: i know youre right  
Dave: im sorry  
Dave: how im feeling is no excuse for acting like this towards you  
Karkat: WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY BEFORE YOU APOLOGIZED WAS THAT IT WASN’T SUCH A BIG DEAL. DAVE, I UNDERSTAND WHAT ITS LIKE TO LOSE PART OF YOUR IDENTITY AND WANT IT BACK.  
Karkat: I CAN’T GET BACK THE PERSON I WAS BEFORE I WAS INFECTED.  
Karkat: AND IN A WAY I UNDERSTAND THAT NEITHER CAN YOU. I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU WERE BEFORE WIT SEC GOT AHOLD OF YOU AND I KNOW THAT YOU HAD TO LEAVE BEHIND A LOT OF THINGS IN ORDER TO GO DOWN THIS PATH YOU’RE ON, SO HERE’S SOME ADVICE FROM SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THAT’S FUCKING LIKE.  
Karkat: TRY TO TAKE THE SMALL VICTORIES WHERE YOU CAN.  
Karkat: YOU SAY THAT SLICK WILL TRY AND FORCE YOU TO COLOR YOUR HAIR TO KEEP YOURSELF DISGUISED, WELL, THERE’S OTHER FUCKING WAYS TO DISGUISE YOURSELF. ESPECIALLY IF IT’S JUST HAIR WE’RE TALKING ABOUT.  
Karkat: WHY NOT TRY CHANGING THE STYLE OR SOMETHING?  
Dave: you want me to get a new haircut?  
Karkat: I’M SAYING MAYBE THIS WOULD FEEL BETTER FOR YOU IF YOU GOT TO PICK A STYLE THAT YOU LIKED. IT’S SMALL, BUT IT’S AMAZING HOW MUCH BETTER YOU CAN FEEL KNOWING THAT IT’S SOMETHING YOU CHOSE.  
Dave: bald it is then  
Karkat: DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU.  
Dave: ok ok sorry  
Dave: you know that might actually fucking work.  
Dave: shit man  
Dave: thats fucking brilliant  
Karkat: SEE? I’M FULL OF BRILLIANT IDEAS.  
Dave: now i just have to find some fucking scissors. hold on a second  
Karkat: DAVE NO! DO /NOT/ CUT YOUR OWN HAIR!!!!  
Karkat: THAT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA YOU DICKWEEK.  
Dave: what why?  
Karkat: I SINCERELY DOUBT THAT YOU CAN GIVE YOURSELF A HAIRSTYLE THAT WON’T LOOK LIKE SHIT WITH WHATEVER KITCHEN SHEARS THAT YOU MANAGE TO FUCKING GET YOUR LITTLE GREMLIN HANDS ON.  
Dave: but you see, i have to get this done before slick gets back to demand i dye my hair black again or all hell will break loose  
Dave: this is a time sensitive project  
Karkat: DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW TO CUT HAIR?  
Dave: no  
Karkat: EXACTLY.  
Karkat: ALL YOU’LL SUCCEED IN DOING IS MAKING YOURSELF FEEL WORSE ABOUT YOUR HAIR AFTER YOU WEEDWHACK HALF OF IT OFF AND MAKE YOURSELF LOOK LIKE SHIT.  
Dave: damn maybe youre right  
Dave: okay ill listen to you but this is still a time sensitive project were dealing with  
Dave: what do you want me to do?  
Karkat: THIS IS GOING TO SOUND CRAZY, BUT IS IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO GET OUT OF THAT SAFE HOUSE SOMEHOW?  
Dave: im not supposed to leave outside of school but fuck the rules.  
Karkat: I THOUGHT YOU’D SAY THAT.  
Karkat: THEY DON’T LOCK YOU IN DO THEY?  
Dave: well yeah but i can still get out. why?  
Karkat: I WAS GOING TO SAY, AND I KNOW THIS IS FUCKING CRAZY, THAT YOU SHOULD COME OVER TO MY HOUSE. I DON’T EXACTLY KNOW HOW TO CUT HAIR BUT I’M SURE THAT I COULD DO IT BETTER THAN YOU HACKING AT YOURSELF IN A BATHROOM MIRROR.  
Dave: thats…. well, maybe that might work  
Dave: whats your address?  
Karkat: WAIT FUCK YOU DON’T HAVE A CAR DO YOU? OR AT THE VERY LEAST A DRIVERS LISCENSE?  
Dave: nope but dont worry ill be there soon  
Karkat: HOW MANY LAWS DO YOU PLAN ON BREAKING TONIGHT?  
Dave: oh ye of little faith have mercy on my poor sinners soul  
Dave: hopefully no laws except the one where slick told me not to leave for any reason. because that ones getting broke rn  
Karkat: DAVE!

Dave made his way over to Slick’s fancy fed laptop. It was sleek and black and when Dave toggled the trackpad a screen emblazoned with the Federal Marshall’s badge popped up. There was no entry port for a password, not that Dave thought he’d have any luck breaking into the device if there were. Instead there was a small square led spot on the body of the laptop by the trackpad for fingerprint identification. 

Dave grinned to himself as he shifted his cell phone to his other hand, typing away to Karkat as he looted the kitchen for tape and coco powder. 

Dave: relax this town has a cab service right? or uber? thats a thing here isnt it?  
Karkat: YEAH BUT THEY DON’T USUALLY RUN THIS LATE AT NIGHT.  
Dave: naw man ubers always ready when the people need them to be  
Dave: ok wait just one sec

Dave lightly brushed the chocolate dust across the brass of the door knob, revealing several overlapping hand prints, most of them Slick’s. It took only a second for Dave to find an appropriate thumbprint and press the scotch tape over it. When he carefully peeled the tape away he got a perfect replica of Slick’s thumb.

Dave made his way back to the locked laptop, wielding the strip of tape before him like a sword. With some higher-up security laptops this would never work because those fuckers detected like pulses and shit as well, but for Slick’s laptop this might just be stupidly simple enough to work. 

Dave placed the tape across his own thumbprint and laid it across the keypad. A small light flashed across the sensor, and an instant later Dave was greeted with the homepage, clustered with approximately one fuckton of icons and disorganized file shortcuts. He grinned, exhilarated at the victory as he placed the used tape in his pocket and replaced the hot chocolate mix in the back of the cabinet. 

He opened Google and looked up the Uber phone number for this area and quickly called the office, typing one-handed as Karkat continued to stress about this.

Karkat: DAVE? DAVE WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  
Karkat: WHY DO I HAVE THE FEELING THAT YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW RIGHT THE FUCK NOW?  
Dave: its just a little law  
Dave: slick will be mad but theres not much he can do about it that will bother me  
Karkat: HE COULD TAKE AWAY YOUR CELL PHONE AND YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO TEXT ME YOUR SHITTY SELFIES AT FOUR AM.  
Dave: do you want me to send you shitty selfies of myself at 4 am? idk karkat that sounds pretty kinky  
Dave: like do you mean headshots or dickpics because im okay with both  
Karkat: NO—DON’T YOU DARE MAKE IT SOUND LIKE THAT! THAT WAS A PERFECTLY INNOCENT STATEMENT AND I REFUSE TO LET YOU RUB YOUR WEIRD IDEOLOGIES OVER MY WORDS. AND IF YOU /EVER/ SEND ME A PHOTO OF YOUR GENITALS I WILL REVOKE YOUR FRIENDSHIP RIGHTS.  
Dave: hey karkat  
Dave: check this out

Dave sent file [feastyoureyes] to Karkat!

Karkat: I’M NOT OPENING THAT!  
Dave: dude relax id never send you an unsolicited dick pic. im all about consent  
Karkat: I’M STILL NOT OPENING THAT.  
Dave: ill have to describe it to you then.

Dave secured proof of Uber’s cab order and went to break into Slick’s room to hunt for cab fare because he had exactly five cents worth of pennies he’d found on the ground at school to his name.

Dave got lucky, the door was unlocked. He smiled to himself as he scoped out the crime scene. 

Dave: the picture shows me standing in front of slicks fancy federally issued laptop thing. im wearing jeans and a red and white shirt. my hairs a fuckin mess but the shitty overhead lights glint artistically off of my sweet shades. im flicking the laptop off because fuck slicks obsessive drive to keep me away from technology  
Dave: also, ill be there in fifteen minutes  
Karkat: ARE YOU UBERING YOURSELF OVER HERE?  
Dave: yes  
Dave: not everything has to have some kind of complicated convoluted scheme behind it  
Karkat: WOW. OKAY. NO LAW BREAKING REQUIRED THEN? AT LEAST NONE OF THE LAWS YOU CAN GET ARRESTED FOR?  
Dave: i wouldnt quite say that

Dave finished looting Slick’s room. The cash hoard was hidden underneath the mattress right where Dave had thought it would be, fucking amateur. He pulled out exactly one twenty dollar bill and replaced everything else in the exact same way he found it. He even wiped his fingerprints off the door handle as he left. 

By this time the Uber was waiting for him in the empty driveway. The front door was locked so Dave went out the side door because that lock was easily toggled from the inside. He got into the cab.

Dave: eta 15 minutes  
Karkat: OH MY GOD THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA.  
Dave: youve never done anything like this before have you? broken the rules?  
Karkat: OF COURSE NOT.  
Dave: how does it feel?  
Karkat: …  
Karkat: …  
Karkat: EXCITING.  
Dave: there we go  
Dave: ill have you setting up ponzie schemes against old people next

“Where ya headed?” The cab driver asked from the front of the car. Dave gave him the address and the man looked at him weird. “You sure about that?”

“Yeah,” Dave answered, shrugging. 

The man looked unconvinced—he probably recognized the address as Karkat’s or something, but he pulled away from the safe house and onto the main road. Dave stared out the window, watching the houses fly past, each one a snap shot of ordinary people living ordinary lives, and then the cab turned down a gated subdivision. The man on duty in the gate house saw the Uber driver flash his card at them and waved the cab through without a word. Dave held back a smile. 

The cab pulled up to a two story brick house that was indistinguishable from the others on the street. Dave sent one last text.

Dave: yo im here let me in

There was movement through the curtained windows, a shadow back-lit against the lights from inside, and then the impressive front door was opening. Dave got out of the cab once he recognized Karkat’s face on the porch. He pressed the twenty dollar bill into the driver’s hand. “Keep the change,” Dave told the guy, and the Uber quickly drove off.

Dave made his way up the short driveway with his hands in his pockets. 

Karkat met him at the door, squinting like he wasn’t wholly convinced that it was Dave sauntering up his driveway.

“Sup,” Dave greeted him. “You invited me?”

Karkat stood aside and held the door open for him. “Okay,” he said. “I told my dad you were coming over and he wasn’t exactly pleased that it was you, but I think he was excited by the idea of me actually having a friend over so… Ground rules.” Karkat said seriously as Dave walked into the nice house. “No FBI or swat raids allowed.”

“Done,” Dave promised, texting Slick his whereabouts. 

Dave: just so you know i left the safe house without permission  
Dave: im at karkats place for both school and personal reasons. i would have asked you about it but you wernt there so i improvised  
Dave: track me using your stupid ankle tracker if you want im just letting you know where i am and that i havnt been murdered or anything  
Dave: so dont swat the house or storm it with a police taskforce. that would be all hells of uncool and pointless

Dave snapped the phone closed and put it back into his pocket before Slick could answer him. He’d deal with the fallout later. “Slick knows where I am,” he told Karkat. “There’ll be no need for swat teams.”

“Just making sure,” Karkat said, locking the door behind him. “My dad would freak out if a swat team showed up to retrieve your delinquent ass.”

Dave grinned, already feeling better as he checked out Karkat’s home. It looked like a stereotypical upscale suburban house, the one they’d film family sitcoms in for daytime television. The only thing it lacked was a fireplace in the living room. 

“Sweet,” Dave complemented. “Nice place.” It was the nicest house he’d ever been in. Shit, is this how normal people lived? No booby-trapped kitchen appliances or cameras that watched his every move? This place looked downright cozy. There was even a wall of school pictures lovingly framed by the window. 

Dave’s throat suddenly felt tight, standing there among the proof of the normal family life he’d never gotten. 

“Thanks,” Karkat said, staring at him. “I’m surprised you agreed to come over.”

“Why?” Dave asked curiously. 

Karkat shrugged, shy. “I’ve never had anyone over before,” he admitted. “Not for a long time, at least.”

A part of Dave thought that was really shitty. “It’s unfair,” he complained. “That more people don’t try to be your friend.”

“I’m used to it,” Karkat answered, swallowing as he reoriented himself. “So,” he asked Dave. “Do you even know what hair style you’d like?”

“Not at all,” Dave answered. “This was a very spur-of-the-moment kind of deal. I haven’t planned anything further than actually locating your house.”

“Okay,” Karkat nodded. “First things first—we look up a hair style you think you can handle and then we try to copy it.” 

“Sounds good,” Dave nodded, willing to roll with it. 

There was a computer in the small side room off the living room, some kind of home office thing. Karkat’s dad raised his eyebrows at Dave as they passed but said nothing, ruffling his newspaper up to cover his face, clearly spying on them. 

They spent less than ten minutes Googling hair styles until Dave found one that both drew his eye and didn’t look too difficult to copy with their combined hair styling prowess. 

Karkat couldn’t help but laugh when Dave pointed out the picture. “That’s the douchebag haircut of the century.” He complained. 

“Exactly,” Dave explained. “Now my hair will reflect my soul.”

Karkat considered the photo. “I guess we could try that one,” he admitted. “But we’ll need to borrow my dad’s clippers.”

“Fine by me,” Dave answered, feeling a building eagerness inside him. This might actually be fun.

Karkat yelled to his dad in the living room. “Dad, can we borrow your clippers?”

“Sure, son,” Mr. Vantas yelled back. “Just try not to get hair everywhere.” There was a pause, then, “And just so you know I don’t think any of this is a good idea. Karkat you’ve never cut hair before.”

“We will figure it out,” Karkat yelled back. He turned to Dave. “Now go wait in the kitchen while I get the shears,” he said. “My dad keeps his hair supplies upstairs.”

“Okay,” Dave said, stretching as Karkat snapped a picture of the computer screen on his phone to use as a reference. 

Dad Vantas was still obviously staring at him from his seat in the living room. Dave gave a half-hearted wave back and the man gave a small I-see-you-there nod that conveyed absolutely nothing about what he was thinking. Dave was impressed. He could normally read people easily and Karkat’s dad was a blank book. It took skill to look that unimpressed.

The kitchen was open and airy against dark floor tiles and granite counter tops. The floor plan for the kitchen alone probably took up more floor space than half of Dave’s old apartment. 

Dave heard the sound of Karkat’s feet behind him and turned. Karkat spilled an armful of objects across the counter top with a clatter and set to organizing them. Dave saw scissors, an electric razor, several combs, and a hand mirror. The box caught him by surprise and Dave reached out to study it closer. Back hair dye, a different brand from the shitty over the counter one Slick had gotten. 

Karkat must have caught the apprehension on his face and quickly explained. “I thought we could use it on the top to clean up the edges.”

“Where did you even get this?” Dave asked, turning the box over in his hands. 

Karkat blushed. The color flooded his cheeks as Dave studied him with delight at the expression. “My dad uses it to cover up the gray hairs I’m certainly responsible for.”

“Oh, neat,” Dave said lamely as he put the small package down. He still wasn’t sold on the dye, but the rest he was ready for. “Let’s fucking do this then.”

It started out simple. Dave brushed through his hair after teasing Karkat about having head lice, purposefully using as many combs as possible to cement the joke. Karkat swiped a chair from the table for him and they turned the kitchen island into a makeshift beauty parlor. 

Dave only hesitated once Karkat plugged in the electric clippers. The sound of them was loud. It filled the kitchen, bouncing off the tiled floor. Dave’s ears were ringing as Karkat put some kind of attachment on the end of the device to prevent him from cutting too close to the skin. 

Dave’s leg started to bounce from where he was seated in the chair.

“Are you sure about this?” Karkat asked, holding the buzzing shears. “Once we start we can’t really go back.”

Dave nodded and braced himself. This was what he wanted, but it took a moment for him to undo his own anxieties enough to allow Karkat to come close to the back of his head with the screeching device. Karkat stood close to him as Dave sat down in the chair, and Dave hadn’t felt so vulnerable in a long time as Karkat occupied his blind spot. He jumped when he felt the first touch of the clippers against the back of his neck. 

Karkat froze. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, concerned. 

“Yes,” Dave said. “Just… just go slow okay? And ignore the obvious ‘that’s what she said’ joke because that’s just implied by this point.” Dave’s leg was still bouncing but he couldn’t do much about that as he choked back his instinctive fear of letting anyone that close to him, physically baring the back of his neck to Karkat against all of his better instincts. 

Karkat set the clippers in place for a second attempt. The sound of them was loud in Dave’s ears, almost unbearably loud, and the steel was cold, but he forcefully held himself still as Karkat carefully trimmed a small stripe up the back of his neck, revealing where his true hair color had grown in underneath the black. 

Karkat kept going, slowly revealing a palm-sized area of hair short as fur, freshly clipped. 

Karkat paused and the clippers shut off as he studied the color. “You know,” he said thoughtfully. “I thought you were blonde underneath here, but its too pale for that.”

“I know,” Dave said, dreading what came next. 

There was a silence. Karkat loudly cleared his throat. “Dave,” he said gently. “Can you take your shades off? I can’t exactly shave around them.”

Fucking busted. Dave felt his leg stop bouncing as a stillness overtook him. It was an illogical fear, and Karkat had a point about not being able to shave around the arms of his shades, but he still didn’t want to do it.

Dave closed his eyes. “Turn out the overhead lights first,” he said. “And I won’t be able to see very well without them—they’re prescription.”

“Prescription?” Karkat echoed. 

“Yeah,” Dave admitted. “I actually have shit vision without them.”

“Why not go for normal glasses then?” Karkat asked logically. “Why sunglasses?”

“Turn out the lights first,” Dave advised, like his next words wouldn’t be a dead giveaway. “I’m photosensitive to light.”

Karkat obediently flipped the switch by the stove and the artfully shaped overhead lights cut off. There was still plenty of light to see by streaming in from the living room, but Dave figured the newly darkened kitchen wouldn’t hurt his eyes any. “Karkat,” he asked, just to be nosy. “You’ve got supervision, right?”

“Yes,” Karkat said simply. “Night vision too.”

“Great,” Dave replied, not sure if he meant it. His leg started bouncing again. “So you’ll be able to see me just fine?”

“Yeah.” Karkat answered.

“Don’t freak out okay?” Dave said, bracing himself as he reached up and pulled off his shades before he could change his mind. 

He kept his eyes closed for a moment, and when he opened them he saw Karkat staring directly at him. He blinked slowly, ready to be judged. 

Karkat didn’t even have the decency to look surprised. The bastard must have just guessed the truth on his own.

Dave cleared his throat. “You know,” he said. “Lycanthropy isn’t the only medical condition out there that causes red eyes.”

Karkat’s own red eyes were full of understanding. “So that’s why you always keep them hidden,” he said softly. 

Dave shrugged. “The photo-sensitivity thing is a big part of that too,” he offered lamely. “I can’t take bright lights of any kind. My biggest enemy right now is the sun and its eventual goal to blind me in inches.”

Karkat softened. All of the tension drained out of him that Dave hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. “I like them,” Karkat told him, smiling shyly. “We match.”

Dave couldn’t describe the feeling of relief that hit him. It struck him like a punch to the gut, filling his belly with butterflies and a warmth that burned through him. 

“We match,” Dave repeated gently, nodding, and he could feel how close Karkat was standing to him as Dave looked up at him, and the moment burned between them, crackling and electric.

“Boys!” Mr. Vantas called out. “Why are the lights off in there?”

The moment between them shattered at the interruption and Dave could feel a blush creeping up his face and tried to fight it back through sheer force of will. 

“We’re just cutting hair!” Karkat yelled back to his dad, rolling his eyes. He picked up the clippers again. “Are you ready?”

Dave tilted his head down in answer and let Karkat continue to carefully cut away all of the dyed hair along the back and sides of his head, revealing where the white had grown through. 

“Your hair is so fine,” Karkat commented, examining his handiwork. “Much finer than mine. I’ve always been too coarse and wiry.”

“It’s not wiry,” Dave replied. “It’s… fluffy.”

“Fluffy,” Karkat repeated, incredulous, but there was an edge of humor there. “You’re too kind to me.”

“And?” Dave answered without thinking. “You deserve it.”

Karkat paused, the clippers buzzing in his hands. Dave felt that blush he’d managed to fight back return in full-force. 

Neither of them said anything else as Karkat continued to clip further up the side of Dave’s head, and if he stood closer than he had before, what of it?

Dave felt the gentle scrape of the plastic blade guard rasp against his skin as Karkat continued to methodically trim up to the top of his head. Dave could feel the exact moment when Karkat’s clippers hit the patch of scar tissue on the right side of his scalp and he couldn’t help but flinch away at the feeling. 

“Sorry,” Dave apologized, freezing. “I’ll hold still.”

There was a pause and then Karkat resumed trimming carefully around the scar, revealing the place where Bro had slapped him with the flat of his blade. The wound was straight-edged and about four inches long, a clean slice where the hair had never grown back properly. 

Dave held his breath and counted the seconds as they passed in silence, and then he felt the warm, delicate touch of Karkat’s hand as he pressed a single finger against the scar. Dave had to hold back a shudder. 

“What happened?”

Dave shrugged without moving any part of himself. It was a skill he had perfected over the years and it got the point across without saying anything at all. “Doesn’t matter,” he said flatly. “It’s an old scar.”

Karkat hesitated, sensing that Dave wasn’t going to give a more defined answer. “It’s going to be visible now that your hair’s short at the sides,” he said.

“I know,” Dave answered, his voice quiet. “I don’t mind.” He forced his fingers to lie still in his lap, staring at the scars that crossed his knuckles and fingers. 

“I think I’m mostly done with the clippers,” Karkat said softly, setting them aside. He studied his handiwork with a keen eye. “It’s a little unbalanced at the top,” he admitted. “But I think we can get it shaped up enough to work.” He handed Dave the hand mirror to have a look for himself. 

Dave studied his reflection closely. He’d never really had short hair before and it took him a moment to reconcile his reflection with the exposed shape of his skull beneath its nearly buzzed covering of white hair. The scar was obvious and eye-catching, but Dave shrugged that off as expected. Besides, the mark didn’t bother him. It was just another fact of life, proof of one time where he hadn’t dodged fast enough. 

“Dude,” Dave said, oddly delighted. “I look like a reverse skunk.” In a way it was true with the untamed mop of darker hair on top surrounded by white.

“We can fix that,” Karkat waved away his joke as he picked up the scissors. “Now hold still, I’m going to even out the edges so it’s not so blocky towards the top.”

Dave set the mirror back on the counter, and he was smiling.

It was a lot of work to get what was growing out the top of Dave’s head under control, but Karkat worked diligently, snipping away bit by bit until Dave’s hair began to resemble that of a classic douchebag. 

Dave couldn’t have been happier with the result. He hadn’t felt more like himself in months as he eyed the almost-finished product. 

“What do you think?” Karkat asked him curiously as Dave turned the mirror around to try and see himself from all angles. 

Dave kept quiet, letting the anticipation build before he said, “Damn, I look hot.”

Karkat burst out laughing at that, true laughter, the unrestrained, free kind that pulled at Dave’s chest as he joined in. He couldn’t quite manage to laugh as easily as Karkat, but he got out a few chuckles at his own expense, his shoulders shaking. His eyes were still bare and for once being seen didn’t bother him. 

Dave could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket and ignored it. “I think we’re running low in time,” he admitted. “I can feel Slick trying to text me, not that I’m going to answer him or anything.”

Karkat sobered up, studying Dave closely as he walked in a circle around him, examining him from all angles. “I think we’re done,” he said, surprised. “It doesn’t look terrible actually, you know, aside from the inherent douchebag-ness of the style itself. I’m impressed.” He went to grab a broom to sweep up the mess of shorn hair they’d made on the tiled floor. 

“Let me help with that,” Dave said, jumping up out of the chair he’d been sitting in for too long. Karkat shrugged and let him take the broom. Dave began to sweep up all of the hair into a neat pile. “Shit,” he joked. “We could make a cat out of this.”

Karkat shook his head, grinning. “Gross,” he complained, his eyes twinkling. 

Dave was still smiling; he couldn’t remember ever smiling like this, but the expression faltered when he felt his flip phone buzzing with an incoming call. 

Karkat clearly head it ringing. He cleared his throat, stepping back. “You going to answer that?”

Dave shrugged helplessly. “I probably should,” he admitted, fishing the phone out. The caller ID read SS and Dave sighed. “One moment,” he said, turning away from Karkat.

He accepted the call with trepidation. “Hello?”

Dave was greeted with the sound of Slick breathing heavily into the phone and nothing else. His heart dropped. “Slick? You there?” Dave asked, trying to get some kind of response.

“Tell me,” Slick said, his voice low and growly. “Tell me you are not where you tracker says you are. Tell me your ass is still at the safe house.”

“I can’t do that, exactly,” Dave said, hedging his bets on what would make Slick not attempt to strangle him on sight. “Because I am exactly where the tracker says I am.” He heard the pattern of Slick’s breathing increase and tried to ward off the coming explosion. “I did text you the address,” he defended himself. “I let you know exactly where I was.”

There was more silence, then Slick spit out, “I’ll see you there in five minutes,” and hung up the phone.

Dave put the phone back in his pocket. Karkat was staring worriedly at him. “How much of that did you hear?” Dave asked curiously. 

Karkat shrugged, rolling his shoulders. “All of it,” he admitted. “He sounds pissed.”

“He is pissed,” Dave said, shrugging. “I’ll deal with it.”

“Are you sure?” Karkat asked, concerned. “He sounded pretty fucking mad.”

Dave reached for his shades and slid them back into place. He didn’t try to explain that Slick could yell at him all he liked. For all of Slick’s bluster Dave knew that the fed wouldn’t lay a hand on him, and without that fear of being beat Dave felt oddly detached from anything Slick might do in retaliation.

Dave finished cleaning up the hair in silence. Karkat had a dustpan and by the time the floor was clean and the kitchen chair returned to its place at the table Slick’s car had pulled up to the driveway, headlights shining in through the front windows as the car idled. 

Dave gave a small shrug. “This was fun,” he told Karkat, meaning it. “Thank you.”

Karkat shuffled his feet behind Dave as they walked out past Karkat’s dad and back to the front door. Mr. Vantas looked equally as concerned as his son, but he didn’t say anything as a loud knocking came from the front door. 

Dave braced himself as Karkat checked through the peephole. “It’s him.”

“Open it,” Dave said, expressionless, and then Slick was there. The man might have been shorter than most but he filled the doorway, looming tall and imposing. 

Slick was about to explode with anger, but then he caught sight of Dave and did a double-take. “Did you cut your fuckin’ hair?” He asked, incredulous.

Dave nodded sharply, wordless.

Slick’s eye found Karkat standing behind him and pursed his lips. “Is your dad home?”

“Yes,” Karkat answered boldly. 

Slick nodded to himself, his jaw working as he at least got conformation of parental supervision. Dave saw him reeling in his anger, trying to force himself to calm down. “Dave,” Slick said. “Go get in the car.”

Dave put his hands in his pockets and slunk past him out the door. His footsteps echoed on the pavement.

Slick followed him wordlessly. The car was still idling as Dave slid into the passenger seat. 

“Seatbelt,” Slick grunted at him as he got behind the wheel. 

Dave silently obeyed, ready for the coming battle. 

Slick began slowly. “How’d you get over here?”

“I called an Uber,” Dave said.

“How’d you pay?”

“You keep five thousand dollars in cash under your mattress,” Dave said blankly. “I used a twenty to pay the driver.” He didn’t volunteer anything about breaking into the laptop—that could be a secret for now. Dave knew he’d probably have to use the trick again. Shit could be useful. 

Slick just nodded to himself. “How’d you get out the house?”

“Side door,” Dave leaned back in the seat, his hands twitchy. “The lock can easily be disabled from the inside.”

“Why?”

Dave stayed quiet. 

“Why?” Slick repeated, louder now. 

Dave shrugged. “I didn’t want to dye my hair again,” he said, his voice betraying him in its honesty. 

Slick said nothing else until they’d gotten back to the safe house. Dave was eager to get back to his room, to avoid the fed as much as was physically possible in a building that small. 

Slick stopped him at the door, his jaw working again. Then he caught sight of the scar on Dave’s head under the ratty porch lights and the fight drained out of him. “Let me look at that,” he said, squinting at the mark. 

“It’s old,” Dave said, dispassionate. 

Slick still looked concerned. “You ever get this looked at?”

Dave said nothing. They both knew what the answer was. 

Agent Slick softened. It was such an odd thing to see from such a grizzled old man that it threw Dave for a loop. He wasn’t sure what to do or say so he just stood there. 

“You’ve got school in the morning,” Slick told him, unlocking the door. “Don’t stay up too late.”

And that was that. No screaming, no cursing, no handcuffing Dave to his bed until he tore his wrist open trying to escape. Dave wasn’t sure what to think about this unexpected twist when he’d been fully prepared to suffer Slick’s wrath, but he knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth as he made his way into his room and closed the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a sucker for a nice eye reveal and awkward dancing around each other as their hearts slowly begin to thaw. 
> 
> Plus Dave freaking out and cutting off all his hair is a classic teen response to issues with things he can't control and is probably the most realistic reaction I've ever written. Karkat's a good friend for being 100% of Dave's impulse control.
> 
> And Slick... He's trying his best and is getting better. It's comforting to see everyone start to work things out.


	7. chapter seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this is up late! The hurricane kinda ruined my update schedule and my new job is kicking my ass but I'll still fight to get these chapters up as fast as I can write them. 
> 
> This will be a long, highly intricate chapter. Expect a shit ton of foreshadowing and double-meanings. Like, I don't think there's one scene in this chapter that's a standalone within the overall plot. Take nothing at face value. 
> 
> Also, mind the tags. We're getting into the shit now ;)

The next day was better. Slick was already gone by the time Dave left for school, off to meet with the rest of his crew about legal schematics as they prepared to inform the families of the people Dave had identified of their probable fate. Dave tried not to think too hard about that. It’s not like he could bring them back. Granting a little bit of closure was the best he could fucking do and he’d done that part already. 

A part of him was concerned about the news breaking to the general public. They’d brand Bro a serial killer even if that wasn’t entirely accurate, and Dave knew that the title would piss Bro off from wherever he was hiding from the law. But Dave knew his Bro would more pissed that Dave had spilled the beans. Dave had just pinned an even bigger target on his back, upped the risk, let Bro know that he was working with the feds and so must be taken the fuck down with extreme prejudice as soon as possible. 

It didn’t really bother Dave. He’d grown up surrounded by the constant threat of death. Upping the risk by a factor of two didn’t make him any more dead if Bro ever found him. At the very least Dave’s act of betrayal merely lengthened how long Bro would draw the act out, but Dave wasn’t worried about that either. He could take pain. The thought didn’t scare him. There was nothing Bro could do to him that he wouldn’t expect, no matter how creative his brother/father got. 

But these dark thoughts wouldn’t do for such a beautiful morning. Dave took a seat on the bus as it bounced along the cracked pavement to the school. He felt warm from the sunlight that streamed in through the window, the sun not yet high enough for its touch to bring true heat. The morning was still warming up, the leaves of trees unfurling at the first touch of the early light. When Dave pressed his hand against the chill glass the window retained a foggy print of his fingertips long after he’d taken his hand down. He watched the sun slowly burn away the memory of his touch and wondered if all his sins could be forgiven so easily. 

The bus reached the school a few minutes early. Dave had just enough time before the bell rang to go and seek out Karkat again. Dave found him by the lockers, sitting on the wooden bench like he was waiting for Dave to show up. Dave couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face at the thought. 

“Hey,” Dave greeted him. 

“Hey,” Karkat said back as Dave took a seat beside him at the opposite side of the small bench. “How was your night?” Karkat asked, concerned. 

Dave shrugged. “Slick let me off easy,” Dave said, still disquieted by the whole event. “He didn’t even yell at me.”

Karkat’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “That’s good, right?”

“Probably,” Dave admitted, his fingers drumming on the knee of his jeans. “I’m not entirely sure to be honest. He had every right to chew out my ass for breaking the rules that I promised to follow.”

“Why do you think he didn’t?” Karkat asked. 

Dave shrugged again. “Maybe he categorized me having a small mental breakdown, running away, and cutting off all my hair as a completely normal teenaged reaction. Shit, Karkat, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do as angsty teens when shit happens? Radically change our outer appearance to try and take control of ourselves back?”

Karkat stared at him in consideration. “I think you’re right,” he admitted. “Plus even I have to admit that the new haircut doesn’t actually look that bad.”

Dave reached up to rub at his newly shortened hair. The softness of the complement still caught him off guard. “What can I say?” Dave said. “You did a good job.”

Karkat nodded, grinning. The expression made his eyes sparkle. Then he looked away, focusing on someone else as a pair of unfamiliar students approached the bench.

“Sorry,” The girl said, looked embarrassed. Dave recognized her from a few of his classes but didn’t know her name. “But me and my sister were wondering if both of you would be interested in joining our book club after school.”

The other girl spoke up, excited. “I couldn’t help but notice that you read a lot so I thought you might be interested.”

Karkat blinked, shocked. Dave was secretly delighted at the baffled expression on Karkat’s face. “You want me to join your book club?”

“Would you?” She asked hopefully. 

Karkat turned to Dave, who was grinning from ear to ear. “Oh yes,” Dave said, nodding. “Hell yes. That’s a fucking great idea.”

“No,” Karkat tried to argue, then paused, looking thoughtful. “Or maybe yes. I don’t know. I’d have to check to see if that’s allowed first.”

“Oh, okay!” The girl brightened, enthusiastic. “We meet on Fridays for an hour or so. Sometimes there’s snacks,” she added, sweetening the pot. 

Dave was fucking sold. Anything that would keep him out of the safe house for longer was a good idea, and with the added bonus of Karkat’s presence? Fucking awesome. 

Karkat was struggling not to sound too excited. “Oh, well then,” he said, swallowing. “I’ll get back to you later if my dad thinks it’s a good idea.”

The girls nodded, looking pleased and they left whispering to themselves and smiling. One of them even glanced back to wave goodbye. 

Karkat looked stunned. “What the fuck just happened?” He asked loudly.

Dave couldn’t help the smile he wore. “That,” he said greatly. “Was an olive branch of extended potential friendship.” He leaned over to nudge Karkat with his elbow. “See?” he said gently. “People have noticed us hanging out. They see us talking. They see you smiling at my dumbass jokes.”

“So?” Karkat asked weakly. 

“So once they saw you being treated like a person I guess it reminded them that they should make an effort to do the same,” Dave said, kicking his legs out in front of him to cross his ankles. He leaned back, the picture of ease.

“They’ve never tried to before,” Karkat pointed out, slightly bitter.

“Would you have let them in?” Dave asked softly, remembering how Karkat had acted the day Dave had arrived at the school. Cold, closed off, pissed off, one-hundred percent ready to abhorrently reject all forms of social contact. 

Karkat paused, looking torn. “Maybe not,” he admitted. “I don’t know.”

“It’s okay to not know,” Dave said, glancing at Karkat out the very corners of his eyes behind his shades. He kept quiet for a few moments, letting Karkat think this through before asking, “Do you want to go to the club?”

“Yes,” Karkat answered quickly. “I think it’s a good idea.”

Dave leaned over to nudge Karkat again. This time he didn’t move away afterwards. “Me too,” He said, looking straight ahead. He didn’t dare to so much as breath too quickly until Karkat had relaxed beside him at the almost-but-not-quite contact.

“This is your fault, isn’t it?” Karkat asked, his voice oddly quiet. “The chance to make new friends? The opportunity to be seen as normal? It’s all because you were the first person here that dared to treat me like a real person.”

“Maybe,” Dave answered, evasive and aloof. 

“Why’s that?” Karkat asked. 

Dave hesitated, and when he spoke his voice was low. “I’ve been around a lot of monsters before,” he said, dead-pan. “And I could tell you weren’t one of them.”

Karkat stared at him. His gaze was searching, then his eyes dropped down to Dave’s hands. 

Dave stared down at where his hands rested on his knee, at the scars that crossed his knuckles, the slices that ran across the backs of his fingers. He turned his hands over to reveal the two halves of the wound he’d gotten trying to block a blade with his hands, a left over from the first and only time he’d been stupid enough to try that trick and had nearly lost his fingers for it. He looked back up at Karkat and saw his gaze linger over the scar that graced the side of Dave’s head. 

“Do I even want to know what happened to you?” Karkat asked softly.

Dave slowly shook his head. “You see,” he explained. “Your tragedy is that everyone knows what happened to you. You can’t hide it. And mine?” Dave didn’t smile. “Is that if I have my way, no one ever will.”

Karkat nodded, worrying at his lower lip. “That’s a lot to try and keep hidden,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Why chose that kind of burden?”

Dave shrugged. “It’s better if no one knows,” he admitted it like a secret. 

“Does Slick know?” Karkat asked. 

“He wants to, but I don’t tell him shit,” Dave said, shrugging again. He wasn’t sure why he was still talking. Something about Karkat’s patient listening just drew the words out of him in a way that the feds had never accomplished. 

“Why not?”

“Well,” Dave started, but was interrupted by the bell as it rang overhead. 

Karkat stood up. Dave copied him. Neither of them moved past that. Overhead, the bell continued to ring, announcing the beginning of the school day. 

Karkat was still staring at him. There was something unreadable in his face that softened as the moment dragged on. “Okay,” Karkat said, breaking. He held out his arms. “Come here.”

Dave just looked questioningly at him.

“It’s called a hug,” Karkat said, exasperated. “And you’ve earned it, so get your ass over here.”

Dave hesitated, and before he could decide Karkat stepped closer and Dave let himself be embraced by his friend. Dave stood there frozen with Karkat’s arms around him, but then something shifted. Dave didn’t feel the urge to pull away at the contact like he would have if anyone else had tried to touch him, instead his own arms came up and he hugged Karkat back on instinct, and in that instant Dave realized that he didn’t want to ever let go. 

The hug itself was perfect. Karkat was the exact correct height so that Dave didn’t feel overwhelmed and his grip was exactly tight enough to ground Dave without being constricting. And the bell overhead had stopped ringing and the hallways were empty and the moment kept dragging on, too long maybe for a proper hug but Dave couldn’t bring himself to care. 

Karkat let go first, his chin lowered as he swallowed thickly. He nodded to himself, his jaw working. “I’ll see you at lunch,” he said, and Dave could only nod in reply as Karkat made his way to class.

Dave stayed in the hallway for a minute, watching him go until Karkat was out of sight. Dave didn’t go to class. He went into the empty bathroom and stood in the corner where the mirrors couldn’t steal his image and reflect it back at him. He wanted to be alone even from himself as Dave wrapped his arms around his chest and tried to reclaim the feeling that had burned through him at Karkat’s gentle touch. 

Dave couldn’t remember ever being hugged before. Hell, he could count the number of times he’d ever been touched by someone not trying to hurt him on his fingers. Dave couldn’t even argue against how good it had felt. 

Dave stood there, his breath coming in gasps. He pulled out his phone and stared at his only two contacts, Karkat and Agent Slick, but he couldn’t fathom typing anything to either of them with his mind racing like this. What would he even say?

Dave slowly put his phone back in his pocket without a word, determined to wait this feeling out until the next bell rang. But that warmth building in his chest didn’t go away, and as insane as it was Dave felt like smiling.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Morning classes, lunch with Karkat and Officer Johnson again where Dave couldn’t help but notice how much more Karkat was smiling and laughing, then afternoon classes and at last History and then the end of school. They said goodbye on the bus and Dave made the walk up to the safe house in a daze. Dave couldn’t even bring himself to care that Slick’s car was in the driveway. 

Slick was waiting for him in the kitchen, reading the newspaper and sharpening a knife to such a fine point that even Bro would have approved. He shuffled the paper down just enough to glance at Dave, and then did a double-check, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You’re in a good mood,” he observed, setting the paper aside to focus on slowly grinding a new edge on his blade. 

Dave shrugged, still grinning. “Maybe,” he said evasively, and he felt light enough to walk on air. 

Slick squinted at him. “That’s fucking helpful,” he said, and Dave drifted past him, intent on his bedroom when Slick’s voice stopped him. “It’s nice to see you look happy for once,” he said, testing the edge of the knife against his thumb. “Who should I thank for this?”

Dave just shrugged, still grinning. He wasn’t going to say anything. 

“It’s that Vantas kid, isn’t it?” Slick guessed shrewdly. “I see you texting him all goddamn day.”

Dave shrugged again. He took a second to carefully wipe all expression off his face and returned to cool indifference. “Maybe,” he said again. 

Slick huffed and picked his newspaper back up. “You’re really not going to tell me are you?”

“Nope,” Dave said, just to be difficult. 

Slick sighed. “You are the definition of a mal-adjusted teen,” he said. “I’d sign your ass up for therapy in a heartbeat if I thought it would help you.”

“You think it won’t?” Dave asked, lightly probing, curious. 

“Naw,” Slick said, before giving up on reading and folding the paper in half in his lap. “For therapy to work you’ve actually got to talk to the fuckin’ doctor.” He gave Dave an equally probing look. “You let me know when you think you’re ready for that and I can find a good doctor for you, understand?”

Dave swallowed around his inability to talk to anyone openly and nodded silently in response. Dave was self-aware enough to know therapy was definitely something he needed but he also knew himself well enough to know that opening up to a stranger was not in his foreseeable future. He made his way to his room and shut the door behind him, tucking away Slick’s promise into the back of his mind.

… 

Monday again. His bus kept arriving earlier and earlier and Dave couldn’t help the sneaking suspicion that it was in part due to Slick’s meddling. Dave stuck his hands in his pockets as he wandered the mostly empty halls over to the bank of lockers and the bench where he predictably met Karkat. 

“What’s the plan for today?” Dave asked as a greeting.

Karkat grinned up at him and snapped his book shut. “I’ve got my English essay due this morning,” he said proudly. “I wrote it on everything wrong in Romeo and Juliet, with a few helpful suggestions on how to fix major plot points so that hopefully everyone survives the fucking story.”

“Like what?” Dave asked curiously. “Like have Romeo listen to his dad and never gatecrash the party in the first place?”

Karkat scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Negating the entire storyline does not mean that everything is fixed.”

“I don’t know,” Dave shrugged. “It seems like avoiding all of the death and struggle in the first place is the obvious right answer.”

“But that’s not the point,” Karkat argued. “Besides, no one would have been happy in the end. Everyone would have been alone and miserable.”

“That’s preferable to being dead,” Dave pointed out with a cheeky grin.

Karkat wasn’t impressed. “Try telling that to Romeo and Juliet,” he scoffed. “They both chose death over being alone and miserable.”

“No,” Dave countered. “They chose death because Shakespeare was writing a tragedy.” Karkat looked at him in surprise as he continued. “The story was never meant to have a happy ending. It’s a simple explanation to a question high school English students have been asking themselves for the last fifty years.”

Karkat paused. “It can’t be that easy to explain,” he said. “I like my explanation better.”

“Which is?” Dave asked. 

Karkat shrugged, standing by his locker as other students began to fill the hallways in preparation for class. “Every time they reached out to show compassion for each other the world they were in reacted with violence. In the end, they couldn’t escape fate. That’s the real tragedy.”

Dave gulped, the words hitting a little too close to home for his comfort. “And how would you fix that?”

“The same way I’ll make the word I’m in accept me,” Karkat said, his voice hardened with determination. “By changing the world so much that fate loses it’s power to cause harm.”

“Do really believe in that?” Dave asked softly. “That you can outrun fate?”

“It’s not outrunning,” Karkat explained, shaking his head. His eyes were clear and earnest. “It’s fighting against fate so much that you break free of it, by changing it’s rules so much that you’re free. It’s taking a stand. It’s refusing to back down. It’s doing the right thing even when the world is telling you differently.”

“Huh,” Dave said, and his smile was creeping back onto his face. “And how does this world-changing philosophy solve Romeo and Juliet’s problems?”

“Mainly by making everything gay as fuck,” Karkat laughed, and even though startled by the unexpected answer Dave couldn’t help but join in. 

“That’s your solution?” Dave asked, impressed. “Make everything gay?”

“Fuck yeah,” Karkat said. “And anyone who thinks differently can kiss my ass.”

“I’ll have to read this essay for myself then,” Dave joked. “You do make some interesting points.”

“I’ll let you borrow it once it’s graded,” Karkat promised, reaching up to the top row to spin the dial on his locker. “You know Dave, I think that considering everything—” Karkat cut off as the locker opened and dumped a heap of something dry and green over him. They spilled across his feet, pinging off his face and getting caught in his hair.

A wash of concern hit Dave as Karkat’s red eyes flew wide enough that the whites flashed, and Karkat was backing away, staggering as his breath heaved in as a wheeze. 

Everything clicked into place in Dave’s mind with horrible recognition and he was already lunging forward as Karkat’s legs seized up and he went down. 

Dave caught him before his head could strike the hard tiled floor but by that point Karkat was already shaking so hard that Dave nearly dropped him before lowering him safely to the ground. Adrenaline flooded his system so hard and fast that Dave couldn’t tell one heartbeat apart from the others. His ears were ringing. 

“Go get help!” Dave yelled at a nearby student, panicked as heads began to turn in their direction and understanding ran like fire through the crowded hallway.

“Everybody run!” Someone screamed, and a few more panicked screams followed the first one as a stampede of student began to flee into the closest classrooms they could get to. 

Dave ignored them, entirely focused on Karkat. There was still a few sprigs of wolfsbane caught in his hair, and Dave quickly combed them free and threw the deadly herb as far away as possible as he began to drag Karkat away from the bank of lockers and the small heap of spilled wolfsbane on the floor. 

Dave made it about ten yards down the hallway with him before Karkat began to choke on his own breath and Dave abandoned trying to get him to safety. He’d never seen Karkat look so scared before. His skin was colorless and pale, his eyes rolling as he began to convulse. 

Dave held him down helplessly, unsure of what to do next. He’d gotten Karkat away but what could he do to counteract the reaction? The damage had already been done. Angry red blisters were starting to form where the wolfsbane had touched Karkat’s skin. 

“Karkat? Karkat listen to me,” Dave said, collapsing beside him, his hands shaking violently. His heart was pounding away inside of him as overhead a siren began to wail. Over the noise of the lockdown alarm Dave heard the sound of heavy boots running at him, and a second later Officer Johnson was there, kneeling beside them.

“What happened?” The policeman asked, his voice rushed with fear. 

“Wolfsbane,” Dave spit out. “It was in his fucking locker.”

“Hold him down,” Johnson ordered him, quickly speaking into the radio at his hip. “The emergency response team is on their way.”

“How long?” Dave asked, and now the fear was beginning to set in, a black, smothering emotion that made him want to curl up into a ball and protect his head as the reality of the hopeless situation began to sink in. 

“Less than five minutes,” Johnson answered, and Karkat wheezed in another breath that sounded pained, like his throat was full of razorblades as his airway closed up with inflammation. 

“Karkat? Karkat listen,” Dave said, desperate. “Five minutes, okay? Five minutes and everything will be okay, you hear me? Hold on, just hold on.”

Karkat jerked his chin down in an abortive nod, fighting against the tremor that rocked through his body. 

“Stay with me,” Dave said, babbling on as his mind raced. Only three things could force a werewolf to Turn—initial infection, which Karkat was long past. A full moon, which was still over a week away, and exposure to wolfsbane, the plant jumpstarting some immune response that boiled down to Turn or die as anaphylactic shock set in and closed off all airways.

Karkat heaved in another pained gasp to drive home Dave’s fear, and his red eyes were wide and terrified. He tried to say something that sounded like ‘_run_’ but ended with a choking noise.

Johnson clearly agreed. “Dave, you should go. It’s not safe for you here.”

“Fuck you,” Dave said, the response automatic. “I’m not fucking leaving him.”

“Dave,” Johnson ordered, and his voice was a warning that Dave didn’t care to heed. 

“No,” Dave said flatly, clinging tighter to Karkat. The siren screaming overhead was all he could hear. The sound buried its way into the space behind Dave’s eardrums to fill his skull with static. He was so focused on watching Karkat that he didn’t notice Johnson draw his gun, but Dave sure as fuck noticed the weapon when Officer Johnson knelt down beside them to level the barrel directly at Karkat’s temple. 

“No!” Dave yelled, forcefully snatching for the policeman’s arm with the hand that wasn’t cushioning Karkat’s head from the hard tiled floor. He could taste his own panic coating his tongue with a bitter, acidic taste as he pleaded. “Don’t!”

“I don’t want to,” Johnson said, his voice shaking. “But he made me promise I wouldn’t let him Turn!”

“He’s not,” Dave argued, because of fucking course Karkat would make Johnson swear a promise like that, and Karkat squirmed beneath him, his breath catching in his chest as he grabbed at Dave’s arm hard enough that his nails nearly broke the skin. 

Karkat was still staring at him, pleading with his eyes as another wave hit him, his muscles tensing and jerking senselessly. 

“No, no, look at me,” Dave commanded, and Karkat was still staring at him and his eyes were so alive and vibrant and scared. “Just look at me Karkat, I’m right here. Just look at me and breathe and everything is going to be okay.” He put his hands on Karkat’s face to wipe away the tears he found there, holding him steady as Karkat struggled against his rebellious body. He ignored the gun still pointed at Karkat’s head; he ignored everything that wasn’t keeping Karkat as calm as possible until help arrived. The seconds ticked by in every precious, strained breath that Karkat fought to draw, each one shallower than the last, and Dave could see that he was failing. He could physically see Karkat getting further and further away in his eyes, that fear in them getting replaced by this frightening blankness, the _him _in Karkat retreating back inside himself.

“Dave, get away from him!” Johnson yelled, sensing the end approaching, but in the parking lot outside Dave could hear sirens screeching to a halt, tires skidding on asphalt as the response team finally arrived. 

“Fuck you!” Dave yelled back, not moving. If Karkat Turned, it would be a race to see who could kill who the fastest, if the wolf could get its teeth around Dave’s neck before Johnson could pull the trigger. That’s all this was, a race. Could the response team reach them before the wolf took over Karkat’s dying body? Could Karkat hold onto his sanity for just a few more seconds?

“Almost there,” Dave promised, cupping Karkat’s face. “You hear me Karkat? You’re almost there, just hold on, just a little longer, please, keep fighting.”

Karkat made a very pained noise that carved out a chunk of Dave’s heart at the sound, and Karkat’s eyes closed, the werewolf’s grip on his arm painful with how tight it was. 

“Karkat? Karkat, stay with me,” Dave begged.

“We’re over here!” Johnson yelled, and Dave could hear the response team racing towards them. 

Crippling relief filled him, almost as painful as the nail currently driving its way deeper into Dave’s chest with every agonized breath from Karkat. 

“Karkat, hold on, help is here,” Dave said, vying to capture any flicker of awareness that Karkat still possessed.

Karkat’s eyes were still closed, his lips pressed tightly together, but his hand held it’s steady pressure on Dave’s arm, keeping him grounded in his panic as Karkat clutched at him like a lifeline. 

The medical team reached them an instant later, already wearing gloves and masks and wielding hypodermics. “Wolfsbane?” The lead nurse asked for conformation, all business-like as she surveyed the scene with a critical eye. 

“Yes,” Johnson answered, nodding as he held down Karkat’s legs.

“Okay,” the nurse said, corralling her forces into action. “Let’s get to work.” Two nurses took control of Karkat’s legs, freeing Officer Johnson to resume aiming at the exact center of Karkat’s skull. 

Dave didn’t move, still cradling Karkat’s face and talking to him, urging him to hold on. 

“I need his arm,” the nurse said, so Dave laced his fingers with Karkat’s free hand and slapped it down wrist-up on the ground. Karkat’s arm was still trembling like crazy, but he didn’t fight back as the nurse slipped the needle beneath his skin and pressed the plunger down. 

One of the nurses near Karkat’s legs stabbed an Epipen into his thigh, and a second shot went into his other leg to try and counteract the swelling and clear his airway of the inflammation that was trying to kill him. 

That part made sense, but Dave had to question the huge-ass needle the head nurse next wielded. He felt his eyes widen from beneath his shades just at the sheer size of it. “What the fuck is that thing for?”

“Sedative,” the nurse barked out without looking at him. “Enough for an elephant.” Without hesitation she jabbed the needle deep into the side of Karkat’s neck.

That provoked a reaction even when the other needle jabs didn’t. Karkat bucked up, his eyes flying open, unfocused and fuzzy and halfway rolled up into his head, his fingers clawing at the floor as he choked out a broken cry, every muscle seizing up.

“Karkat, Karkat _no_!” Dave ordered, grabbing for his face again as Johnson reflexively raised the gun.

“Everybody get back!” The nurse yelled, and the needle was still hanging out of Karkat’s neck, the plunger still up as the nurses scrambled away from the wolf trying to claw its way free of Karkat. 

Dave made a grab for the thing as Karkat writhed in his grip. Panic made his hands slippery but Dave grabbed the needle and pressed the end down to flood Karkat’s system with the medicine.

Dave was the only one left within grabbing range of Karkat, everyone else had backed away as Dave returned to Karkat’s face and physically pulled the other boy into his lap just to hold him. A crowbar couldn’t have pulled them apart, Dave defiantly staring down the barrel of the gun now pointed at him. 

But that didn’t matter—Johnson wouldn’t shoot him. Nothing mattered except Karkat in his arms and the way his pained gasping was growing looser, the air coming easier as the medicine began to take effect as the tightly-wound tension drained out of him. 

Dave dared to start hoping as Karkat went boneless, his breath rasping like his throat was raw, but he was breathing and the shaking was stopping.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Dave promised Karkat, not caring if he couldn’t hear. 

The lead nurse cautiously approached them again, needle in hand a she knelt beside them and reached for the catheter still lodged in Karkat’s arm and injected him with something else. “This should knock him out,” she told Dave, testing the pulse at Karkat’s wrist with two fingers. She waited a moment until Karkat’s heartbeat had slowed to the point where she knew the worst had passed. “He’s out, let’s load him up.”

The bright yellow gurney appeared out of nowhere, and Dave wordlessly got his feet under him and stood, lifting Karkat in his arms like his weight was nothing. He gently laid Karkat out on the flat board and helped arrange his slack limbs into place as the nurses strapped him down.

Dave followed right beside Karkat as they rapidly wheeled his comatose friend out to the waiting ambulance. The parking lot was flooded with lights and sirens, a sea of police cars and red-blue flashing that reminded Dave uncomfortably of the day he’d turned on Bro and his skin felt like ice as the wheels of the gurney rattled across the pavement. 

Dave didn’t try to climb into the ambulance after Karkat, small spaces like that filled with strangers made him uncomfortable. He still watched as they slapped an oxygen mask across Karkat’s face an instant before the ambulance took off for the hospital, sirens screaming, flanked by a police escort.

Dave was so busy staring after the vehicle that he didn’t notice the policeman beside him until Office Johnson laid one heavy hand across his shoulder and Dave violently recoiled from the touch with his whole body, flinching away.

Johnson pulled his hand back like Dave had scalded him, palm flat-out in appeasement. “Easy,” he said, low and gentle like a few minutes ago the man hadn’t been holding a gun on him. Not that Dave held that against him. Shit was common sense. “Let’s go back inside.”

Dave wordlessly followed the man back into the school and into the front office while other cops roped off the hallway and started their investigation near the lockers. Dave felt numb as he collapsed into his normal lunchtime chair and stared at the empty seat next to him until sickness rolled through his belly. 

The intercom system crackled to life overhead, Principal Warren’s voice speaking to the school. “We are still under a lockdown, but the situation is secure. There is no danger to students or teachers at this time. Please sit tight while we get this situation dealt with.”

Now that his adrenaline was wearing off Dave’s hands began to shake and he breathed deeply through his teeth, sucking in air.

Johnson was staring at him. He swallowed thickly before speaking. “You’ve got to be the bravest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.”

Dave barked out a humorless laugh at the irony of it. He wasn’t brave, not ever. 

“No, seriously,” Johnson told him, nodding. “I think you just saved Karkat’s life.”

Dave did nothing but accept the words. He didn’t trust himself to speak as he pulled out his phone and rapidly typed out a message to Slick. 

Dave: i need you to come get me from school as soon as possible  
Dave: some shit went down and im sorta freaking the fuck out right now  
Dave: please

He snapped the phone shut before he could type something more pathetic than _please_. His throat felt tight enough that breathing hurt. He tried to shove all of his emotions away but that only worked up until a certain point and he knew if he tried to speak his voice would break. 

“Are you okay?” Johnson asked, concerned. 

Dave stared at his empty hands and shrugged. He didn’t know enough to name what he was feeling. 

Johnson left him alone after that, and as time passed Dave’s thoughts kept getting more convoluted, the same instants and moments cycling through his mind on repeat like his own personal slideshow of horrible-ness as he tried to figure out where he’d gone wrong, where he’d fucked up, identify the place where he’d made a mistake because he was always the one responsible when shit went wrong, except this time no matter how hard he thought and how many ways he tried to twist the situation around to place the blame on himself, Dave couldn’t think past the block in his mind that was screaming ‘I think you just saved Karkat’s life’ on repeat. 

He didn’t know how long it took for Slick to reach the school; he only knew the instant when the fed arrived, cursing up a storm as he burst into the office. “What the everloving **FUCK** is goin’ on here? Where’s my fuckin kid?”

Slick had probably seen the police cars still jamming the parking lot and assumed the worst, but that understanding didn’t lessen the jolt Dave felt at being called _kid_. 

“Dave’s fine,” Officer Johnson told him. “He’s right here.”

Slick’s gaze landed on Dave, who didn’t move as the fed gave him a very thorough once-over to check for any obvious stab wounds.

“What the fuck happened?” Slick asked him, his voice too loud and Dave flinched back from him wordlessly. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Johnson answered for him and Dave was instantly grateful. 

Slick turned to the man. “Then what the fuck happened here?” He demanded to know. 

Officer Johnson answered him deadpan. “Someone tried to murder Karkat at school.” He nodded in Dave’s direction. “Dave stopped it. Saved his life for sure.”

Slick froze, his jowly jaw working as he glanced back at where Dave sat, then back at the policeman. “How’s the kid doing?” He asked, his voice softer. 

“They took him to the hospital,” Johnson said. “Karkat heals fast. I think he’ll recover from this, but Dave’s the one who made sure that he got that chance.” Johnson took a deep breath and let it out in a whistle. “Bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Again that word brave made a sharp feeling shoot through Dave’s core. That wasn’t right. He hadn’t been brave at all, he’d just done what needed doing to save Karkat from dying. 

Johnson was still talking. “Dave was a hero today,” he said, because he might have known Dave was wit-sec but he didn’t know why, didn’t know everything Dave had done to not deserve that word. 

“Okay,” Slick was nodding. “Let me get him back to the safe house. He’s clearly been through a lot today.”

“Normally students aren’t allowed to leave during a lockdown,” Johnson admitted. “But I think I’ll make an exception. Just make sure he gets some food and some rest tonight. I’ll make sure no one else gets their hands on any video footage of the incident.”

Slick nodded again, anxious to go. “Dave?”

Dave jumped out of his chair like someone had lit a fire under him. He wanted nothing but to leave immediately. Karkat’s empty chair mocked him. 

“Okay, let’s go,” Slick said, and Dave wordlessly followed him out of the building with his shoulders hunched against the weight on all his unsaid thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some of the best writing I've done so far and I am living for it. 
> 
> This entire chapter is Dave facing a crossroads. Like in this paragraph-
> 
> But these dark thoughts wouldn’t do for such a beautiful morning. Dave took a seat on the bus as it bounced along the cracked pavement to the school. He felt warm from the sunlight that streamed in through the window, the sun not yet high enough for its touch to bring true heat. The morning was still warming up, the leaves of trees unfurling at the first touch of the early light. When Dave pressed his hand against the chill glass the window retained a foggy print of his fingertips long after he’d taken his hand down. He watched the sun slowly burn away the memory of his touch and wondered if all his sins could be forgiven so easily.
> 
> I could go on for ages about what all of these scenes mean, but in short it's Dave starting to realize as time passes that redemption might be possible. But there's a warning buried in there as well, a threat, the repetition of the idea of their own personal tragedies, and we later witness an attempt on Karkat's life directly after his Romeo/Juliet spiel (which is another whole thing on it's own) and we end on Dave leaving the school with Agent Slick, sick with his own unsaid thoughts. 
> 
> I should probably stop talking before I give away too much! I am in love with this story and these characters! Poor Dave, Poor Karkat T-T


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this is up so late guys but Big Stuff happened in my life that made me put writing on hold for a bit. I'm still settling into the change but I'll keep writing as fast as I can to keep these chapters coming. I think I'll try to aim for one or more updates a week from now on and not every other day. That's just not realistic anymore with my job plus life in general. It's okay though. Things are getting better. 
> 
> Now let's get to the new chapter.

Dave didn’t sleep much that night. He was used to going without sleep whenever things got bad and he quickly fell into his old habit of anxiety-induced insomnia. He did not actually crawl inside of his closet though. Dave might not have wholly trusted Slick yet, but he knew the fed wasn’t batshit crazy enough to try and attack him in his bed like Bro would have done. Still, Dave wanted the security of a small dark space to hide away in. The unfamiliar shadows of his safe house bedroom were enough to put his nerves on edge as the night wore on and sleep stayed far away. 

It took forever for morning to come close enough to breaking so that Dave to hear the sounds of Slick up and moving around in the kitchen, fumbling through coffee mugs and making toast in the loudest way possible. Dave waited for around another half-hour for the sun to paint the eastern sky rosy before creeping out of his room. 

Spades Slick was still in the kitchen. His back was turned but his head tilted to the side when he heard the uneven floorboards creak under Dave’s bare feet. 

“Did you sleep at all?” Slick asked without turning around. 

Dave just shrugged, his hands in the pockets of the same jeans he’d been wearing yesterday. 

Slick turned around to face him. It was early enough in the morning that he wasn’t wearing his ever-present eyepatch and the thickly scarred hole where his eye should have been was covered in shadow. In a way the wound made Dave jealous. It should have been an ugly thing, but it had healed well and the leftover scars were faded and neat, so different than any of Dave’s own marks, highlighting the vast difference in appearance actual health care could cause. 

Almost like Slick could sense exactly where Dave’s focus was even through his shades, the fed gingerly picked up his eyepatch from off the counter and snapped it into place. Dave said nothing. 

“How are you feeling?” Slick asked, and this time Dave didn’t try to shrug. His sleepless night was weighing on him, exhaustion settling into his bones. 

Slick stared at him. “You should try to get some sleep,” he said. “No school for you today.”

Dave pulled his phone out of his pocket to check for messages, and once he saw he still had nothing from Karkat he snapped the phone closed, his fingers tapping nervously against his thigh as he said the first words he’d spoken since the attack. “I want to go to the hospital.”

Slick nodded to himself as he moved slowly about the small kitchen, gathering up bread and butter. He placed the two slices of white bread in the toaster and pressed them down. The timer started ticking. “Try to eat first,” Slick said, and that didn’t mean no like Dave had expected. “You didn’t eat last night and I won’t let you make yourself sick.”

The unexpected gentleness of the fed’s gruff voice rubbed against Dave’s shot nerves. “I never get sick,” he shot back harsher than he meant to, and his hands were shaking. 

Slick stared at him like he doubted that, and that was all the excuse Dave needed to let his emotions twist into anger. A white-hot feeling filled his veins and Dave clung to it because feeling mad was easier than feeling everything else. He opened his mouth to spit out something hurtful, something volatile and venomous, and then there was a sharp ding as the toast in the toaster popped up and Dave couldn’t help but jump back at the unexpected noise, cringing down with his shoulders drawn up around his head.

Agent Slick calmly lifted up the hot toast with a fork and placed them on a paper plate. He set the slices down on the small table between them like an offering, right beside the butter. He cleared his throat. “You should eat, Dave,” he said, sliding the plate closer to Dave. “I can drive us to the hospital afterwards.”

Dave’s shoulders slumped. He couldn’t hold onto his anger in the face of Slick’s patient concern even as a part of him recognized the compromise for what it was. If eating some toast could get him to Karkat faster, so be it. 

Dave stared at the two slices of white bread. They’d been crisped brown and were still steaming slightly. He didn’t feel hungry at all, but he scarfed down the toast as fast as possible, limited by how fast he could swallow down the dry bread. Crumbs went everywhere but Dave ignored them. 

Slick nodded to the empty plate as Dave set it down between them. “You want some more?”

“No,” Dave said, and his throat was painfully dry. 

“Go get in the car,” Slick said, jangling the keys in his pocket. “Let’s go check on your friend.”

Dave ghosted out the front door after slipping on his worn out shoes and down to the sleek car parked in the dirt lot outside. The early morning sun was just starting to get high enough to leak it’s light through the pine trees that lined the road. His feet left footprints in the wet grass behind him as he slammed the car door shut and buckled in. 

Slick took a minute to appear outside, angling his hat low over his face against the bright light of morning as he made his way to the car and climbed in.

“You keep this thing unlocked?” Dave asked, his voice flat. 

Slick just shrugged. “I figure that no one would be dumb enough to steal it from the safe house,” he said, starting the car. “I keep it locked everywhere else though. You just can’t trust people like you used to.”

“I doubt you’ve ever trusted anyone,” Dave said. “Not anyone you didn’t already know.”

Slick sat there, the car idling in the driveway. Then he shrugged again and the car started forward. “You’re probably right,” he admitted. “I’d love to say that I’d trust a stranger to do the right thing but I’ve seen too much shit to actually believe that.”

They drove in silence for the rest of the ride. Dave stared out the window, watching the town pass by. The hospital was nearly fifteen minutes away, a building of white concrete that shone in the sun. There was a helicopter on the roof; Dave could spot the blades from the parking lot. The front entrance was dwarfed by the ER drop off point, nothing but a small blue door that led to a neat, sterile waiting room.

For Dave the idea of hospitals existed as more of an abstract concept than a physical place that he could walk into. The thought that places of healing existed to cater to complete strangers was still new to him. He’d only been in a hospital once before and his shoulder ached with the memory of it as Agent Slick made his way to the front desk. 

Dave put his hands in his pockets, listening in.

“We’d like to make a visitation,” Slick told the woman seated behind the desk.

She peered at them through thick bottle glasses. “Name?”

“Karkat Vantas,” Slick said, coughing roughly. “He’s still here, isn’t he?”

“Are you family or kin?” She asked, ruffling through a sheaf of papers in her hands. 

“Uh, no,” Slick admitted. “Dave’s just a concerned friend.”

Dave held his breath as the woman looked over at him with a critical eye. 

“I’m sorry,” she said kindly. “But the Vantas family is not accepting visitations at this time.” She looked back down at her papers in clear dismissal as Dave’s heart fell. 

“Wait just a minute,” Slick argued. “The kid’s Dad is here, right? Tell him Dave’s here. I’m betting he’ll want to see us.”

The receptionist glared at him but obediently picked up the landline phone at her desk and made a call to the back of the hospital as Dave waited on pins and needles for the reply. “Mr. Vantas will be here in a moment,” she told him. “Please take a seat.”

Dave ignored the chairs scattered along the walls in favor of standing in the corner, shifting his weight from foot to foot as the seconds ticked by. It didn’t take long for the double doors that led into the body of the building to fling themselves open and for Mr. Vantas to storm out. 

Dave had only seen the guy twice before and they hadn’t really talked, but even he could see the change in the man. Mr. Vantas’s eyes were deeply shadowed and lined, his face gray and tired with the strain of the past 24 hours. Even so, when his gaze landed on Dave his entire face lit up with recognition and relief. “You,” he said, striding forward. 

Dave would have backed away if there had been any room for it. Mr. Vantas was a big man with wide, imposing shoulders that reminded him just enough of Bro to set off all of Dave’s inner alarms to get away.

Luckily Agent Slick intercepted Vantas with an out thrown arm. “Easy there,” he grunted. “Try not to crowd him out, okay?”

Mr. Vantas fell to a halt a few feet away, blinking. “Alright then,” he nodded. “Dave, right? Dave Lalonde?”

“It’s just Dave,” Dave answered shortly. He didn’t know why, but he felt uncomfortably pinned beneath this man’s steel gray eyes. 

“Dave then,” Mr. Vantas said. “I need to thank you Dave. I saw the footage. You saved him. You saved my son’s life.”

Now Dave knew why he felt so uncomfortable. He almost wanted to argue on the principle of it, except he knew what he’d done. He knew exactly what he’d done with a clarity that shocked him. He couldn’t stop remembering how Karkat had spasmed under his hands, every muscle pulled taunt to the point of snapping as his very seams threatened to unwind into a new, more violent form. But Dave didn’t say anything because to admit out loud that he was uncomfortable with the idea of saving a life was to admit how thoroughly Bro had fucked him up. So he didn’t say anything, instead changing the subject. “How is he doing?”

The redirection worked exactly as intended even if Slick frowned at Dave’s clear evasion. Mr. Vantas’s face lit up again as he eagerly explained his son’s condition. “Karkat’s going to be okay,” he said, relief evident in his face. “He’s almost completely recovered from the effects of the wolfsbane. In fact, he won’t stop complaining about being here, insisting he’s well enough to go back home.” The man shrugged his shoulders helplessly, still overjoyed. “We’ll probably get discharged soon.”

As much as the news soothed a bit of Dave’s stress, he still couldn’t help but ask, “Can I see him?” His voice was flat, quiet, and betrayed zero emotion. He didn’t know enough about how hospitals worked to get hopeful, so the answer still caught him by surprise. 

“Sure,” Mr. Vantas said, waving him forward. “I’m sure my son would be glad for the company.”

Slick followed at his side as Dave trailed after Karkat’s dad, deeper into the depths of the building. The door they stopped at was unmarked and plain, featureless against a backdrop of a dozen identical doors that littered the empty hallway. Mr. Vantas knocked twice before entering. 

Dave swallowed thickly before stepping into the small room. The light overhead was warm but glaringly bright, illuminating Karkat sitting upright in a blue bed and looking extremely pissed off. His angry expression relaxed into shock and surprise when he caught sight of Dave. “Dave?” he asked, squinting in Dave’s direction like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You’re here?”

Dave felt a painful jolt as deep in his chest something unclenched at last, and he took his first real breath in hours. “Hell yeah, man,” he said, gulping as his heart fluttered inside him as he finally started to fucking relax at the sight of Karkat’s alert face. He couldn’t stop the gentle, teasing smile that crept across his rebellious face. “Even being hospitalized can’t get you away from my annoying presence.”

“Thank God for that,” Karkat said, matching his grin as he sat up straighter. “I’ve been bored to death in here. The doctors won’t let me go no matter how much I insist that I’m fine now.”

“You can’t blame them for being cautious,” Dave rationalized. “You did nearly die on us a few times.”

Karkat grimaced and looked down at the bed. “Yeah,” he trailed off. His hands made fists in the thin blanket. “I saw the film,” he said quietly. “You saved me, didn’t you, Dave?”

Dave was already shaking his head. “No,” he answered. “Johnson did. The emergency response team did.”

“Maybe,” Karkat replied, sneaking a glance at where his father stood like he didn’t want to argue and be overheard. 

Dave swallowed thickly past the lump in his throat. “How’s it feel being the first werewolf to survive wolfsbane exposure?” He asked curiously, seeking to change the subject. 

“Honestly?” Karkat scoffed. “It feels really shitty.”

“I bet,” Dave told him. He didn’t come closer. He could see the places on Karkat’s face where the blisters were supernaturally fading back into nothingness. Soon there would be no hint of what had happened, not physically at least. 

Slick cleared his throat from the corner. “Film?” He questioned casually. 

“Later,” Mr. Vantas promised. 

The thought of the footage of the attack being seen by anyone made Dave distinctly uncomfortable. The thought of Agent Slick seeing it… shit. It made Dave feel like he’d swallowed a handful of ice cubes and now the chill was radiating through him. 

Karkat must have noticed how Dave’s hands had fallen still. “Hey, Dave?” He said.

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be out of here soon,” Karkat said hopefully. “My observation period is almost up. Then I’ll be back home and be back at school again.”

“That’s great,” Dave said, meaning it. “I’ve been trying to text you all night.”

Karkat grimaced again. “My phone’s probably still in my backpack at school,” he admitted. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dave waved away Karkat’s guilt. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Karkat looked up at him, and his open expression was so earnestly gentle that Dave’s heart gave a sharp pang. “Dave,” Karkat said. “I—”

The door opened and a nurse walked in. Karkat cut off what he was about to say to stare at the guy. 

The nurse raised his eyebrows at the crowded room. Dave stared impassively back from behind his shades as Slick crossed his arms. 

“Can I help you?” Karkat asked, sulking. 

The nurse quickly reoriented himself. “Yes,” He said. “Karkat, it’s time for your final evaluation. If everything checks out, you’ll be free to go.”

Karkat perked up at that, sitting up straighter. “Finally,” he sighed. “I hate being stuck in here.”

“Karkat,” Mr. Vantas began, but his son waved him off.

“I’ll have to ask the two of you to leave,” the nurse told Dave and his government assigned federal agent. “So that I can start my assessment.” 

Dave just shrugged and shot one last look at Karkat. He didn’t really want to leave but the knowledge that Slick’s eye was on him made him hesitant to disobey. He didn’t want the fed to catch on to the fact that Dave’s careful act of uncaring impassiveness was just that—an act. 

“But—” Karkat tried to argue.

“It’s okay,” Dave said, interrupting him. “I’ll see you at school.”

Karkat shut his mouth, looking unhappy. “Alright,” He ceded. “I’ll try to hunt down where my phone went so I can text you.”

“Sweet,” Dave said, keeping it short even with all the things he was leaving unsaid. 

Still, Karkat looked like he understood as Dave quit the room, sending a small, wry grin after him. Slick stuck to Dave’s back and Mr. Vantas followed after them out into the hallway. 

“Film?” Slick said again, not as casual this time as he tipped his hat lower over his face.

Mr. Vantas nodded. “I kept the film away from the media for Dave’s sake,” he said. “Though it was partly for my son as well.” He frowned, the expression severe as he coughed. “I dislike the media poking around, sniffing for a story when we all should focus on trying to recover from what happened.”

“I don’t suppose we’re lucky enough for that film to show us the vile scum that did this?” Slick inquired.

Mr. Vantas shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he answered. “The cops kept me out of the loop on this one. I expect that on the legal aspects of this case you’d know more than me.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s correct,” Slick said, huffing. “Since Dave’s involved this case is my business too.”

Dave hadn’t considered the fact that technically he was part of a second investigation now. For obvious reasons he felt a lot better about this case. Not only was it Bro-free and fairly straight-forward, in the end no one had died and that counted for a lot. 

“Here,” Mr. Vantas said, leading Slick into an empty side room to slide a thin laptop free of the bag at his side. “I’ll let you take a look for yourself if you’ll spare me a few details of your investigation.”

“Deal,” Slick agreed. 

Dave tentatively followed after them. Mr. Vantas set up the computer and pulled up the tab. The video was already open and ready to play. Slick dimmed the lights. 

Dave stared at the tab. His mouth was a thin, flat line as he easily recognized the hallway at school. 

Slick checked over him with a glance. “Are you okay to see this, Dave?” He asked. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

For a second the sheer disconnect of hearing those words was enough to throw Dave out of the moment entirely and he was back in the apartment again, Bro angling the computer screen in his direction. “Watch this.” Bro’s voice was an order and a dare. Look away and face the consequences. Most of the snuff films Dave had been forced to view had been Bro’s own work, but a few were from other inspired copycats on the darkweb. These videos Dave’d had to study, to pick apart and critique at his Bro’s behest, to find all of the flaws in what Bro considered lesser works than his own. Dave had never quite dared to critique Bro’s films, far too afraid of what speaking out would do. 

“Dave?” Slick asked again, softly. His arm lifted like he was going to touch Dave’s shoulder, then froze and drifted back down to his side. 

Behind his shades, Dave blinked, his vision swimming as he drug himself back to the present and sucked in the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, shrugging off his minor flashback. “I’m good.”

Mr. Vantas hit play.

The footage quality was top-notch, and the scene was shown from three different angles from how many high-tech cameras were crammed into that school. Someone had edited the footage together to form a coherent storyline, and Dave’s heart was pounding as he watched a smiling, unaware Karkat reach up to open his locker. Dave was trying his hardest to not watch himself, to keep his eyes on Karkat, but that grew hard to do the instant Karkat hit the ground. 

The convulsing looked twice as awful when seen for a second time, but Dave was distant from it now that he knew that Karkat recovered, that he’d survived this. The viewing angle switched when the Dave on video finished dragging Karkat was far up the hallway as he could manage, and here Officer Johnson came running in right on time. 

From this angle the gun glinted in the light and at his side Slick stiffened, leaning forward, his eye fixed on the screen. 

Dave swallowed thickly as he watched himself shove Johnson’s gun away from Karkat’s head. He didn’t really pay attention to the film again until the medical team arrived—Dave knew all of this already. He had each scene printed with perfect clarity in his mind, but there was something about watching it from 3rd person, something about seeing his own face staring up at Johnson’s gun with Karkat in his arms, his face a mix of pleading and challenge. He felt ill. 

All in all, the film was a little over nine minutes long from start to finish. Funny. It seemed like it had taken longer the first time around. The screen went black and Dave blinked at the sudden darkness before Slick turned on the light again. His face was grave. 

Slick rubbed at his scruffy chin, and his eyes looked old and tired. 

Mr. Vantas nodded at them, his expression serious. “Now then,” he said, staring hard at Slick. “What do you know?”

“The attacker didn’t bother with breaking into the locker,” Slick said at once. “They simply cut a rectangle out of the top, with a rock cutter probably, and then dumped the plant inside and filled the locker up to the top with it.”

“So they knew exactly which locker was his,” Mr. Vantas nodded. 

“But not the combination,” Slick pointed out. He sighed. “The cameras don’t run overnight so we don’t have any footage of who did it. We’re still running forensics on the physical evidence found at the scene. It’ll take weeks to sort through everything.”

“What about the doors?” Mr. Vantas asked. “How’d they get inside?”

“The school doors are electromagnetically sealed,” Slick answered. “But the system can be overwritten with a strong enough generator to short out the automatic locks. It wouldn’t take more than a single weekend in a garage with a few trips to the local hardware store to get everything they’d need to pull this off.”

“And we had no idea until it was too late,” Mr. Vantas sighed, distraught.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Slick told him reassuringly. “Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing.”

Dave fought the urge to close his eyes. He could recognize good work like this. This plan had been executed perfectly and calibrated to only target Karkat. He was certain that the police could comb over those lockers all they wanted—they wouldn’t find shit. 

“Dave?” Slick asked him. “What do you think about this?”

Dave looked up in surprise. Why would the fed value his input? His fingers twitched. “I don’t like it,” he said plainly. “Whoever did this thought it out perfectly. They were prepared. They succeeded in everything they set out to do except for the end result.”

“Is that it?” Slick asked him gruffly. 

“No,” Dave answered on automatic. “They will try again.”

“Are you sure?” Slick asked. 

“Yeah,” Dave said. That’s what Bro or any other of his pals would do. None of them would ever stop after a single failure. 

Mr. Vantas was clearly surprised at Slick asking Dave for his thoughts. The man didn’t know why Dave was in wit-sec, but Dave could see him rolling with it. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “We’ll up security. Run the cameras 24/7, redo the doors.”

“That’s a start,” Slick said. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Vantas said. “Coming here today, visiting my son… it means more to both of us than you know.”

“Just hang tight,” Slick told the man. “Keep an eye out for anything strange until we catch the bastard that did this.”

“Will do,” Mr. Vantas said, and then Dave followed Slick back out of the twisting halls of the hospital. 

The car ride back was silent, nothing but the crunch of tires against the pavement until Slick broke the quiet with a question. “So,” he said. “You and that Vantas kid, huh?” Dave said nothing and Slick kept talking. “You must be real good friends. I could see it happen in you, I could see the change come over your face when you saw that he was okay.”

“So?” Dave said, emotionless. He clung to his detached façade. 

“So it’s fuckin obvious that you wanna be more than friends,” Slick stated plainly, and Dave felt his heart skip a beat. Slick continued like he hadn’t noticed how still Dave had gotten. “You know, kid,” Slick said as he turned down the road to the safe house. “Before I met you, before the powers that be assigned me to your case, my boss warned me not to accept the assignment of protecting you. He warned me that you were probably some kind of sociopath. I figured that you had to be, raised like how you were.” Slick coughed roughly, swallowing. “But I’ve met a lot of sociopaths before in my line of work, a lotta men who flipped on their bosses to save their own skins, a lotta people who don’t know the meaning of loyalty if it jumped up and bit them in the ass.”

Dave kept leaning against the door and didn’t move. It felt like if he so much as twitched he’d shatter whatever moment this was. 

Slick pulled into the dirt lot in front of the safe house but didn’t cut the car off. They sat idling there for a second. “You know,” Slick said, turning his eye on where Dave sat. “In the beginning, I figured that’s what kept your mouth shut about your Bro—some fucked up kind of loyalty.”

Dave pressed his lips together as tightly as he could. 

“But sociopaths rarely know loyalty,” Slick said, his hands still locked on the steering wheel. “And when they do they break it as soon as it suits them to and walk away with no remorse. You? You’re not like that, and seeing how you treat that Karkat kid just proves it to me. You’re no kind of sociopath.”

Dave felt his carefully constructed walls crumbling around him and he blinked furiously to fight back the way he felt his eyes watering. He vividly remembered Droog calling him a psychopath when the federal marshal was over at the safe house. “Then what am I?” He asked. 

“You’re exactly what I was when I was like you,” Slick told him. “You’re just some lost, fucked up kid floundering in a world he doesn’t understand.”

Dave forced himself to speak. “I fucking doubt you were ever like me.” He didn’t say anything else. How could he?

“Maybe not,” Slick admitted. “But maybe we weren’t so different. I was only a little older than you when I fell ass-backwards into the shit, you know? Maybe eighteen, young and stupid and gullible enough to go running to the mob to make a name for myself. That’s when I met _her_.” Slick’s voice shuddered through the word. “Crime royalty. A bona-fide mob princess, the boss’s daughter herself. And of course my stupid ass had to go and fall in love with the broad.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because here’s the thing,” Slick said, looking at him at last. His single eye glittered in the light. “That weren’t love. The bitch was crazy like she smoked three packs of violence a day to keep her hands steady. But I was young and stupid and didn’t know how love was supposed to be, so I forgave her for everything bad and vile and evil she did to me. She… she had this way of making me feel thankful that she put up with me, like everything was my fuckin fault. I even forgave her when she did this,” Slick reached up and gently tapped at where his eyepatch covered the scarred hole where his eye once was. “How fucked up’s that? I forgave her for cutting out my eye and extinguishing her cigarette in the hole she left behind.” Slick let out a humorless huff of a laugh, nearly incredulous at the stupidity of his younger self. “You know, Dave, it took me an awful long time to realize that weren’t love, to wizen up, to try and get me the help I deserved.”

Dave gulped as Slick went on. “And I can’t argue. I can’t say that she didn’t ruin me,” Slick said. “Snowman fucked me up. It took years for me to recover enough to even think about trying to love anyone else because of how badly she hurt me.”

In a way Dave understood, but most of his mind was occupied at how Slick had come to the wrong conclusion. “But I never loved Bro. And I don’t forgive him.”

“I’m not talkin about your Bro, kid,” Slick said gently. “I’m talkin about Karkat Vantas.”

Dave bit down on his tongue, hard, struggling to keep his face even. 

“Nothing to say, eh?” Slick teased, the ghost of a grin on his face. “That’s alright. All I’m trying to say is that no matter what you’ve been through or who hurt you… Things always get better. The right people will eventually come into our lives at the right time. We all get a second chance.”

Dave sucked in his breath. Was that what he wanted? A second chance? To eventually move past what his Bro had done to him? To be a better friend to Karkat and then maybe something more? Was that really something that was possible?

“I don’t know how,” Dave admitted, hating how warbled his voice sounded. His hands kept flexing into fists and then relaxing again. Open, fist, open, fist, watching the scars move over the backs of his knuckles. 

“And that’s okay,” Slick nodded, and then he cut the car off. “You’ve got a good heart, kid. I can see it shining underneath all that bullshit you’ve buried it in. Just keep trying to be yourself and I swear things will get better.”

Dave wanted to close his eyes to soak in the moment. Maybe, just maybe, things would get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a huge chapter for character growth! While it mainly deals with the slower-paced aftermath of the attack, several very important character things are revealed that will set the stage for what happens next. I'm so excited! I love all of these characters so much and I hope that I'm writing them right for the situation they're in. Stabdad is best dad :)


	9. chapter nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Its update time! Hell yes! I am pumped for this next chapter let me tell you.
> 
> Or, even better, I'll just let you read it for yourself! 
> 
> Here it is, the new chapter!

Monday again, and the first day Karkat was back at school. He’d be gone by Friday, stolen away by the rising moon, but for the next few days Dave could go back to pretending that everything was okay between them. 

And at first it worked. His school bus arrived a few minutes early, they chatted in the hall by a brand new bank of lockers that had been recently installed, then met at lunch where even Officer Johnson seemed eager to act like nothing had happened last week. 

Then Dave felt his phone vibrate against his leg while in English class. He took a second to prop his boring textbook in his lap as a shield before pulling out his phone. He expected the message to be from Slick, but instead he saw gray text. 

Karkat: DAVE? ARE YOU THERE? YOU’D BETTER BE. I’M RISKING DETENTION BY TEXTING YOU IN CLASS LIKE THIS.  
Dave: whats up?

He couldn’t help the way his heart picked up at the sight of the familiar all-caps words. And Karkat had never texted him during class like this, so it must have been important. 

Karkat: I…  
Karkat: GOD I HOPE I DON’T DRIVE YOU OFF BY BEING SUCH A NOSY PRICK, ESPECIALLY AFTER YOU LITERALLY JUST SAVED MY FUCKING LIFE, BUT YOU HAVE TO ADMIT THAT THE SITUATION BROUGHT UP SOME QUESTIONS THAT HOPEFULLY I’M AT LIBERTY TO ASK.  
Dave: dude what  
Dave: liberty?  
Dave: isnt that a flag thing?  
Karkat: CAN I ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS OR NOT? BEING EVASIVE ISN’T GOING TO LET YOU AVOID THIS, NOT THIS TIME DAVE.  
Dave: im not evasive  
Karkat: YES YOU ARE. IT’S HONESTLY SHOCKING HOW EVASIVE YOU CAN BE WHILE STILL BEING COMPLETELY TRUTHFUL.  
Dave: ok thats slightly better. i dont really lie, especially not to you  
Karkat: I KNOW. YOU JUST AVOID TOPICS YOU DON’T WANT TO DISCUSS BY SWAMPING THE CONVERSATION WITH EIGHT METRIC TONS OF PURE BULLSHIT UNTIL THE ORIGINAL POINT IS LOST UNDER THE WEIGHT OF ANOTHER LONG-WINDED AND FRANKLY DISGUSTING METAPHOR.  
Dave: but this time you want me to be frank  
Karkat: YES, DAVE, THAT’S EXACTLY CORRECT.  
Dave: whos dave?  
Karkat: WHAT?  
Dave: my names frank not dave  
Dave: dont know who this dave guy is but i might have a problem with the dude if you keep confusing the two of us like this. im fucking wounded karkat. how many guys do you text?  
Karkat: OKAY.  
Karkat: THIS ISN’T GOING TO WORK. I’M SORRY THAT I BOTHERED YOU. I’LL SEE YOU IN HISTORY.

Dave waited a moment, but Karkat didn’t text him back. With a growing sense of dread, Dave quickly texted him. 

Dave: wait  
Dave: shit  
Dave: im sorry i did it again right then didnt i?  
Dave: please ignore me and my frothing pile of bullshit and ask away im listening i swear

It took a second, but then the gray text appeared again.

Karkat: ARE YOU SURE? THESE WON’T BE EASY QUESTIONS, WHICH IS WHY I THOUGHT DOING THIS THROUGH TEXT MIGHT BE EASIER THAN FACE-TO-FACE.  
Dave: should i be worried? this shit sounds serious  
Karkat: I’M NOT SURE.  
Karkat: ITS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. I KNOW YOU DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE TALKING ABOUT THIS AND I’M SORRY.  
Dave: how did you know?  
Karkat: I SAW THE WAY YOUR FACE CHANGED WHENEVER MY DAD OR YOUR AGENT BROUGHT UP THE SUBJECT WHILE I WAS STILL IN THE HOSPITAL. I LIKE TO THINK THAT I’VE BEEN GETTING BETTER AT READING YOU BUT SOMETIMES ITS STILL IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON INSIDE YOUR HEAD.  
Dave: trust me thats a good thing  
Karkat: I KNOW.  
Karkat: YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME ANYTHING—I KNOW. AND ITS OKAY DAVE. I’M NOT GOING TO ASK YOU ABOUT YOUR PAST, NOT NOW AND HOPEFULLY NOT EVER, NOT WHEN ITS CLEARLY SOMETHING THAT YOU EITHER DON’T WANT TO OR CAN’T TELL ME ABOUT.  
Dave: its not that i dont want to tell you things  
Dave: its just that some things i cant talk about due to very real legal reasons and other things i dont want you to know about because once you know itll change everything  
Karkat: THAT’S WHAT YOU REALLY THINK? THAT THERE’S ANYTHING I COULD LEARN ABOUT YOU THAT WOULD CHANCE HOW I THINK OF YOU?  
Dave: uh, yeah?  
Dave: isnt that obvious?  
Karkat: DAVE.  
Karkat: INCIDENTALLY THIS IS THE EXACT TOPIC I WANTED TO DISCUSS WITH YOU.  
Karkat: I TRY TO HIDE HOW MUCH MY DISEASE AFFECTS ME EVEN WHEN ITS NOT A FULL MOON BECAUSE I KNOW THAT ONCE PEOPLE RECOGNIZE THE WOLF IN ME I’LL SCARE THEM OFF FOR GOOD. LIKE, AS SOON AS I OPENED THAT FUCKING LOCKER THAT WAS WORST-CASE SCENARIO, OKAY? I WAS FUCKING DOOMED. EITHER I’D TURN AND JOHNSON WOULD SHOOT ME, OR HE’D SHOOT ME JUST IN CASE, TO PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY.  
Karkat: SURVIVING WHAT HAPPENED TO ME WASN’T EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE ON THE FUCKING BOARD OF POSSIBILITIES. BUT SOMEHOW YOU CHANGED THAT. YOU SAVED ME. AND MY DAD SHOWED ME THE FOOTAGE OF WHAT HAPPENED AND AS GRATEFUL AS I AM THAT YOU DID WHAT YOU DID, I WAS STILL HEARTBROKEN. 

Dave read the wall of gray text with a growing sense of incredulous disbelief, fixating on the word heartbroken as Karkat continued.

Karkat: I THOUGHT I’D LOST YOU. I THOUGHT I’D SCARED YOU OFF FOR GOOD, LIKE YOU’D SAVED MY LIFE ON INSTINCT BUT ONCE YOU’D HAD A FEW HOURS TO INTERNALIZE WHAT HAD HAPPENED YOU’D RUN FROM ME JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.  
Karkat: AND JUST AS I WAS TRYING TO WORK THROUGH THE THOUGHT OF GOING BACK TO SCHOOL TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT YOU WERE NOW RIGHTFULLY IGNORING ME, WHICH I DESERVE, ONLY TO HAVE YOU WALK INTO MY HOSPITAL ROOM TO VISIT ME.  
Karkat: I THOUGHT I WAS HAVING A STROKE FOR A SECOND, BUT YOU WERE REALLY THERE. YOU WANTED TO SEE ME EVEN AFTER WHAT HAD HAPPENED. 

Swallowing hard, Dave butted back into the conversation, finger’s flying across the keyboard behind his safety text book shield. 

Dave: of course i did.  
Dave: karkat i was going crazy at the safe house all night wondering how you were and if youd be okay or not. i didnt even fucking sleep. how could i? the last image i had of you was them rushing you to the hospital in the back of an ambulance.  
Karkat: AND DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW FUCKING ABNORMAL THAT IS???????  
Karkat: MOST PEOPLE WHEN FACED WITH THE REALIZATION THAT A LARGE PART OF THE GUY THEY’VE BEEN HANGING OUT WITH WANTS TO RIP OUT THEIR BEATING HEART RUN THE FUCK AWAY.  
Dave: out of curiosity how big of a part are we talking? half? more than half? idk i cant care too much any time someone wants a piece of my sweet ass  
Dave: or are we talking about size as in geological locations? like how big exactly? is this a house-sized hunger for hearts or is it bigger? rhode island perhaps? lake ontario? or is it the size of planet fucking jupiter like oh shit thats a pretty big part karkat not gonna lie  
Karkat: YOU GET WHAT I FUCKING MEANT, FUCKFACE. AND OKAY MAYBE I EXAGGERATED A LITTLE. I DON’T ACTUALLY WANT TO EAT YOU DAVE. THERE IS NOT PART OF ME THAT EVER WANTS TO RIP OUT YOUR HEART, THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS.  
Dave: then why did you expect me to be afraid of you?  
Karkat: I…

Dave let his face flick up to the whiteboard, which was growing covered in texts and quotes that he took a second to glance over. He hadn’t actually read the assigned book reading for this class and he didn’t plan to, but the mindless memorization came easily to him. 

Karkat: BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DID.  
Karkat: I HAD FRIENDS, YOU KNOW. AT MY FIRST SCHOOL. LOTS OF THEM. NOT ONE OF THEM STAYED AFTER WHAT HAPPENED. THEY WERE ALL TOO AFRAID OF ME, OF WHAT I’D DONE.  
Dave: that wasnt you  
Karkat: YOU THINK I DON’T FUCKING KNOW THAT?  
Karkat: BUT THEY KNEW THAT TOO AND IT STILL DIDN’T MATTER. JOHN…  
Karkat: NEVER MIND. I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE FRIENDS I LOST, ALRIGHT? I’VE ALREADY MADE MY VERY BITTER PEACE WITH THAT.  
Karkat: THE POINT IS THAT I FULLY EXPECTED YOU TO HATE ME AFTER WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK.  
Dave: karkat i could never hate you  
Karkat: BUT YOU REALLY SHOULD. I ENDANGERED YOUR LIFE. FUCK, DAVE, YOU HAD A GUN POINTED AT YOU! AND THAT WAS ALL MY FAULT.  
Dave: no  
Dave: none of that was your fault not one little thing  
Dave: this is the fault of some crazy lunatic who tried to kill you.  
Karkat: AND THAT’S ANOTHER THING.  
Karkat: I’M SO SORRY DAVE THAT YOU GOT TIED UP IN THIS MESS. YOU’VE GOT YOUR OWN COURT CASE TO DEAL WITH AND NOW THERE’S THIS VIDEO OF YOU SAVING MY LIFE AND ITS NOT THE KIND OF PUBLICITY THAT YOU NEED RIGHT NOW, I KNOW THAT AND I’M SORRY.  
Karkat: BUT WHY DID BOTH SLICK AND MY DAD ASK YOU FOR ADVICE ON WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?  
Dave: you caught that, huh?  
Karkat: YEAH.  
Dave: would it be too much to ask you to think that it was just slick being an idiot? because thats a true statement in any case.  
Karkat: DAVE.  
Dave: ok ok  
Dave: …  
Dave: . . .  
Dave: ok i dont really know what you want me to say  
Karkat: THE TRUTH MAYBE?  
Dave: what if i dont know what that is?  
Dave: what if im just really fucking knowledgeable about how people like this operate?  
Karkat: PEOPLE LIKE WHO?  
Dave: people that try to kill kids in schools.  
Karkat: JESUS CHRIST, DAVE.  
Dave: hey you asked for the truth  
Karkat: I KNOW, SHIT, I’M SORRY. I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO TRY AND UNPACK THAT STATEMENT IN ANY WAY, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU’RE NOT GOING TO HELP EXPLAIN IT, ARE YOU?  
Dave: nope  
Karkat: OKAY THEN. MOVING ON.  
Karkat: THE POINT BEHIND ALL OF THIS IS THAT, FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON, YOU STAYED. YOU DIDN’T LEAVE ME, THEN OR NOW.  
Dave: i dont know how else to tell you this, but i dont exactly plan on leaving anytime soon  
Karkat: AND I DON’T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THAT I HAVEN'T HAD SOMEONE LIKE THAT IN A VERY LONG TIME. AFTER I WAS TURNED I HAD TO RECONSTRUCT ALL OF MY RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE CONSTRAINT THAT, BARRING MY DAD, THEY WOULD ALL EVENTUALLY LEAVE ME OUT OF FEAR. AND THEY HAVE A GOOD REASON TO. DAVE, I COULD HAVE KILLED YOU.  
Dave: so?  
Karkat: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN? SO? WHAT THE FUCK, DAVE?  
Dave: no wait shit its not like that. i do actually care about staying alive you know  
Dave: but  
Dave: i knew from the beginning that being friends with you carried certain risks and i accepted them. does that make sense?  
Karkat: YOU… ACCEPTED THEM?  
Dave: yeah  
Karkat: YOU KNEW THE RISKS AND JUST… DID IT ANYWAY? JUST AS EASY AS THAT?  
Dave: well yeah  
Karkat: AND YOU WEREN’T AFRAID?  
Dave: of you? naw.  
Dave: for you? hell yes  
Dave: one little brush with death isnt going to be enough to run me off karkat. not now and not ever  
Dave: to tell you the truth i dont think ill ever be afraid of you  
Karkat: THAT’S IT. THAT’S MY LAST QUESTION. THAT’S WHAT WAS MISSING IN THE TAPES THEY SHOWED ME—YOUR FACE. YOUR ACTIONS. YOU WERE COMPLETELY FEARLESS.  
Karkat: ARE YOU REALLY NOT AFRAID OF ME?

Dave thought for a minute about his answer, about the emotions he’d felt during the attack, about how even in the middle of it, staring down the barrel of a gun, he hadn’t felt even a touch of true fear beyond worry for Karkat. 

Dave: no  
Dave: im not  
Karkat: WHY?

Dave swallowed thickly, a thousand memories flashing through his mind at once, each one of the one thing that truly scared him. 

Dave: i think, and dont quote me on this, that im only really afraid of three things  
Dave: and youre not one of them  
Karkat: JUST LIKE THAT?  
Dave: yeah  
Karkat: AND EVEN NOW, EVEN AFER COMING CLOSE TO DYING WITH MY TEETH AROUND YOUR NECK, YOU’RE STILL NOT AFRAID? AND YOU WON’T LEAVE ME?  
Dave: im not afraid and im not going to leave you  
Dave: i promise  
Karkat: …  
Karkat: DAVE. THANK YOU.  
Karkat: I’LL SEE YOU IN HISTORY.

Dave looked up from his phone just in time to see the teacher gently set a pink detention slip on his desk and grinned. 

…

He and Karkat arrived to the door for History class at the exact same time mostly because as soon as Karkat saw him he picked up the pace, nearly jogging to catch up. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Dave replied, still taking him in. Today Karkat almost looked completely back to normal. The only hint that something was off were the fearful glances the other students kept shooting their direction, but fuck them. 

Karkat paused at the door. Dave flashed him the detention slip with a look of triumph. 

Karkat grimaced. “Is that my fault?”

“Naw,” Dave answered, still grinning. “I’d have devised another way to land my ass in detention even if you hadn’t started texting me.” He waved the pink slip, content with his rule breaking. “That’s three hours’ worth of detention Friday already, and it’s only Monday.”

“Jesus,” Karkat said, turning into the classroom as the late bell began to ring overhead. “What else have you done today, you heathen?”

“Little things mostly,” Dave shrugged. “Texting in class, jailbreaking a lab computer, you know, the basics.” He grinned again, walking in step with Karkat to his seat. “By this point I alone probably make up the majority pay of whichever Friday teacher pulls detention duty.” He fell into his seat beside Karkat as the classroom chatter began to die down.

“Why do you give yourself so much detention time?” Karkat asked curiously as he opened his textbook to the correct chapter. 

Dave shrugged again. “More time spent in detention is less time spent at the safe house,” he rationalized, and Karkat blinked as the class lecture started, his attention sliding away as the teacher began to drone on and on about something involving the great economy crash of 2008, which stuck out in Dave’s mind for very different reasons than those the teacher offered because Bro had been pissed that his stream of income was slowed as the global economy tanked before the payouts had become regular again. Sadistic bastard. Dave spent all of class etching out rap lyrics across his notebook, thinking very hard about nothing heavier than words that rhymed with joke. It was a great mental break. 

Then the bell rang again, and school was over for the day. It was a quick walk to the bus and then an extra ten minutes spent together before the bus dropped Karkat off at his dad’s office. Almost as soon as the bus jolted back into motion, Dave had a text on his phone. 

Karkat: I NEVER GOT TO SAY THIS TO YOU IN PERSON TODAY BECAUSE I AM IN FACT A CHICKENSHIT, BUT DAVE, THANK YOU AGAIN. FOR STICKING AROUND. FOR SAVING MY LIFE. FOR EVERYTHING.  
Karkat: TO ME, YOU’RE MORE THAN JUST A GOOD PERSON, REMEMBER THAT THE NEXT TIME YOU THINK ABOUT HACKING INTO THE SCHOOL’S MAINFRAME OR CONSIDER DUMPING WEEK KILLER ACROSS THE FRONT YARD.  
Dave: both excellent ideas karkat, thanks  
Dave: thought id dump the week killer in the shape of a penis, just some great dick and balls right there across the front lawn for weeks until the grass grows back. fucking artistic, really  
Karkat: I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT. NOW I’LL BE COMPLACENT IN YOUR RULE BREAKING WON’T I?  
Dave: only if you admit publicly that this conversation ever happened  
Dave: your secret is safe with me  
Karkat: JUST… THANK YOU. REALLY.  
Dave: okay  
Karkat: OKAY?  
Dave: yeah. but can i say something as well?  
Karkat: SURE.  
Dave: thank you too. for dealing with my bullshit and all of the things i cant legally explain that fuck me up on a daily basis. for not asking the bad questions. but mostly for thinking that somehow despite everything, that im a good person.  
Karkat: YOU ARE A GOOD PERSON, DAVE. SOMETIMES I THINK YOU JUST NEED HELP LETTING IT OUT, BUT THAT GOOD I SEE, IT’S IN YOU ALL THE TIME. REMEMBER THAT, OKAY?  
Dave: thanks  
Dave: i think i needed to hear that  
Dave: ill see you tomorrow, ok

The bus stopped at the shitty mailbox, the pole leaning crooked. Dave could see the sunlight shining through the steel from when someone took a shotgun to the mailbox years ago, the punctures rusty with time. Dave stepped off the bus, the roadside gravel crunching beneath his feet before the ground transitioned into dirt and dead grass. 

From the outside the safe house didn’t look like much. It was rundown but not decrepit, nothing a passing car would take note of for any reason, but from here Dave could make out the hidden glint of cameras hidden in the trees that flanked the house. Slick’s car was in the driveway, its dark paintjob dull beneath a layer of dust and grime that was subtly at odds with Slick’s nitpickingly clean nature because at this house, nothing was what it seemed. Dave could recognize a mask when he saw one, even on a fucking car. 

Slick wasn’t in the kitchen when Dave walked into the house. He wasn’t in the living room either. Dave stood at the threshold of the two rooms, teetering. It would have been so simple to continue on to his bedroom, to shut the door behind him and go back to pretending like nothing had changed, but Karkat’s words kept bouncing around Dave’s skull like glass marbles, so he went ahead and bit the bullet. “Slick?” Dave called out without raising his voice. The sound of it echoed in the stillness of the seemingly empty house. “Are you in here?”

There was a loud thump from the direction of Slick’s bedroom, the sound of muffled cursing and heavy footsteps across the creaky wooden floor as Dave’s federal agent appeared around the corner, wearing a neatly pressed suit and a generally pissed-off look on his lined face. He blinked at where Dave stood. “Dave?” He asked, his voice gruff. “What is it? What food are we out of?”

Dave shook his head. “We’re not out of food,” he said, swallowing as the words in his throat dried up. 

Slick’s eyebrows raised with suspicion at that, his expression sharpening as something in Dave’s posture gave away the atmosphere in the room. “Kid,” he said softer, gentler. “What is it?”

Dave couldn’t figure out how best to segue into such uncharted territory, so before he could convince himself to simply walk away he said. “I want to answer some questions. About my Bro.”

To Slick’s credit, he didn’t react. He simply nodded once as if mulling the idea over in his mind. 

“But,” Dave forced out, trying to wrestle the shake out of his voice. “Nothing… extreme, alright? At least not right off the bat.”

“Understood,” Slick nodded. “And what do you want in return?”

Dave swallowed thickly. “Nothing,” he said, shrugging to lessen the seriousness of his answer, to degrade it down to nothing. “I figured it’s the least I could do to make sure that you get that bastard off the streets.”

Slick dipped his chin towards the kitchen table. His ever-present tape recorder appeared in his hand, pulled out of a deep pocket. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Dave swallowed down his inbred sense of self-preservation to nod along with the fed. He was already doomed if Bro found him. He might as well make damn sure to drag Bro down to hell with him. “What do you want to know?”

Dave didn’t take a seat at the table, instead gripping the back of a chair until his knuckles turned white. Slick didn’t sit either, though like before he set the recorder between them, its little red light blinking. 

“First,” Slick said, roughly clearing his throat with a harsh cough. “I want you to know that with the help you gave us before with the pictures… you helped a lot of families out there start the road to recovery.”

Dave could stand here and debate all night about the impossibility of recovery after what had happened in that apartment, but that was beside the point. Slick was just trying to calm him down, to make him feel like his actions had good consequences, to make him keep talking. It was an easy tactic to spot. 

Dave felt his grip on the chair increase. “What do you want to know?”

Slick stared at him. “Let’s not talk about them, the victims,” he said, surprising Dave. “Let’s not talk about you either,” he said before Dave could protest. “Let’s talk about him. ‘Bro’ Strider, the self-made man. The ghost in our systems.” Slick paused to gauge how well Dave was receiving the words before he continued. “Do you even know his real name?”

“No,” Dave gulped. “Everyone online only knew him as Strider, and I only ever knew his first name to be Bro. Strider’s probably something he picked up along the way as a new name to own, to claim.” Dave stared down at his hands. “Even if you somehow find out who he was as a kid, it doesn’t fucking matter. There’s nothing buried in his past that you could use against him that he hasn’t already buried or burned himself, just in case the worst-case scenario happened, you know, like me flipping on him.” The last few words came out as a choke and Dave could feel his nails pressing into his palms. “Even if against all odds he has a mother living somewhere out there, I can guarantee you he doesn’t love her. Bro doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself.”

“Alright,” Slick nodded, his voice calm and even. “Why don’t you tell me more about him?”

Dave took a deep breath to steady himself. “What do you want to know?” The question was an open invite into everything that Dave didn’t want to ever say out loud, but he held back his dread for long enough to get the words out. “I know that you’ve been dying to profile him, to see what mold you can try to force him to fit into. I’ll answer as many questions as I can.”

Slick nodded, differently his time, almost to himself as he tried to center his thoughts on the conversation. “Why’d he do it?” Slick asked quietly, his voice intense. “What drove him to kill so many people, complete strangers even?”

“Nothing,” Dave said, shrugging. “To him it was never anything more than a job, you know? It’s what he was good at doing, so he made it his living.” He stared back impassively at the federal agent’s look of disgust. “That’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?” He pushed back just a little, just hard enough to keep this honest between them by virtue of being intentionally difficult. “You want to know what box to pack him away in to make this go away the fastest, to explain away the crazy so that you feel safer at night, like just by labeling him an aberrant you can curb the behavior in others.”

“Maybe so,” Slick said, surprising him. “But there’s power in knowing things about your enemy, you know?” Slick studied him. “the more I know, the more I plan, the more places I think to look for him, the wider the net we’ve cast gets, the tighter the noose that you set around his neck grows.”

Some part of Dave knew that the image of a noose growing tighter around Bro’s neck with each passing word out of his mouth should have pleased him. it should have made him feel validated, spiteful, even. Instead he just felt sick. 

“You want to catch him,” Dave said, stating the obvious.

“Yes,” Slick answered. “I want that more than anything.”

“Why?” Dave asked.

Slick didn’t blink. “Because people like him deserve to pay with their lives for what they’ve done. I’m over-fucking-joyed that Texas still believes in executions.”

“So you want him dead,” Dave said. “In the long, drawn out legal way.”

“No,” Slick answered, sighing. “But that’s as close to my happiness as I can get without breaking the law and murderin’ his foul ass.” 

Dave would have smiled if this wasn’t so serious. “You will never take Bro alive,” Dave said, simply. “I don’t care how you do it. The fucker all but sleeps with a cyanide pill under his tongue, determined to have the last word and end things on his fucking terms.”

“So you’re saying he’ll kill himself if we get close,” Slick asked. 

“No,” Dave said, looking away. “He’ll force a shootout with police and go out in a final blaze of violent glory, taking as many cops and random bystanders with him as possible.” He kept it as straight-forward as possible, stating the facts. “He’ll never let himself get taken alive.”

Slick winced at that, as if he were imagining his team caught in the fictional crossfire. “Well,” the agent coughed roughly, the sound raspy. “Part of my job’s to take the bastard still breathing.”

“I thought your job was to keep me still breathing?” Dave joked.

“You’re only most of my job,” Slick answered wryly. “The other 50% is struggling to make sure that you stay safe, which can only be possible once your Bro is behind bars.” 

“50% isn’t most,” Dave argued, but the feeling was coming back into the ends of his fingers as the conversation stayed safe, until,

“Why’d he do it then?” Slick asked, his voice so soft that Dave could scarcely hear him. “If it was just a job to him, why’d he do it? Why did he hurt you?”

Dave stared down at his hands, the knuckles white from where he gripped the chair. His shoulder ached with remembered pain, and all of the lines Bro had carved into him stung and twinged. Dave tried to answer because he knew why, didn’t he, but the words couldn’t pass his lips. There were two reasons why Bro had done what he’d done, three if Dave were being honest, and Dave could bring himself to say none of them out loud, so he stuck as close to the truth as he could without revealing anything. “Because he was a vicious bastard who could only hurt the people around him.”

“Is that all?” Slick asked, sensing Dave’s hesitation.

“No,” Dave said. “But it’s all for today,” he said, and he carefully peeled his fingers free from the back of the chair and all but fled the room, his phone in his hand and a text to Karkat already typed up before he even shut his bedroom door.

Dave: hey karkat  
Dave: hows your homework coming? im not doing mine but algebra was hard as fuck today so i wanted to check in with you about it and make sure everything was ok  
Karkat: DAVE DEAR GOD I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU HAVE THIS UNCANNY INSTINCT FOR KNOWING EXACTLY WHAT I’M STRUGGLING WITH. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY NUMBERS IN HERE? WHY DOES MATH HAVE NUMBERS?

Dave felt his breathing begin to even out again as he lost himself in carefully going over the homework equations with Karkat, shoving everything else far away to deal with another day because right now the only important thing was that Karkat was safe and Bro was still underground somewhere, and as long as Dave could count on those two things being separate he might just get through this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the last semi-slow chapter for a long time because after this everything starts falling apart but in the best of ways as plot points begin to collide and lines blur. The slow burn is just getting started. 
> 
> Anyone want to take a crack at what Dave's three fears are? Or the reason why Bro was such a shithead? All will be revealed in time but I do love hearing everyone's guesses :)


	10. chapter ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! Chapter ten! At long last, it's here!
> 
> Enjoy your over 5k of what happens next! :)

The next day Dave found Karkat at school with a particularly sour expression on his face. His thick eyebrows were drawn together and there was a scowl on his pretty lips. 

“What’s up?” Dave asked by way of a greeting, curious about what could piss Karkat off like this. 

Karkat’s eyes flicked over to him, still scowling, though his expression began to soften at Dave’s presence even as he looked around to make sure they couldn’t be overheard as Karkat leaned closer to speak, his voice simmering lower. “The cops finished looking over my locker for clues about who tried to kill me,” he said, annoyed but unsurprised. “They found jack shit.”

Dave couldn’t help but nod along. “I know,” he said. “Slick mentioned it to me this morning, but I’d kinda guessed that by now.”

“How?” Karkat demanded to know, his voice raising. 

Dave shrugged. “If they’d found anything they’d have told you by now,” he pointed out. “They held onto their hope for a long time before admitting defeat.”

“Defeat?” Karkat questioned, one eyebrow quirked. 

“Setback,” Dave redirected. “Minor setback. I’m sure they still have a few leads they’ll be following.” He looked around the mostly empty hallway as the bell rang and students began to file into classrooms. “It can’t be that hard to find out who all knew your exact locker number. That or they hacked the school feeds to find it, or the information was leaked. Or,” Dave cut off, the notion hitting him with a wave of nervousness. 

“Or?” Karkat prompted dryly, unmoving as the bell continued to drone. 

“Or it was one of us,” Dave swallowed thickly, but not because of his last thought, because he saw the pieces click together in his head. He kept talking anyway, just to get out his final sentence. “A student. It can’t be that hard to get ahold of that much wolfsbane, not if you know where to look or have been growing it out back behind the woodshed.”

Karkat cast a suspicious glance around the now empty hallway. “That’s what you really think?”

“No,” Dave answered. “I think I already know who did it.”

It took Karkat a clear moment to process what Dave had said, and he broke off his next word with an astonished choke. “You what?!” It came out a near screech.

Dave blinked behind his shades, his eyes dry. His heart was pounding. “I think I know who did it,” Dave repeated. “I think I just figured it out.”

Karkat grabbed his arm, his grip tight but gentle. If it had been anyone else, Dave would have jerked away. Still, his arm shook with a tremor and an instant later Karkat released him like he’d been shocked. 

“Sorry,” Karkat apologized in a hurry. “But what do you mean you think you know?”

It took Dave a half-second to recalibrate after the unexpected touch, remembering the feel of Karkat’s fingers through the thin material of his sleeve. Part of Dave wanted Karkat to touch him again, so he forced that part of himself to shut the hell up as he tried to focus. “I need to call Slick,” he said. “Let’s get to the office. Principal Warren and Officer Johnson need to know and its better that you’re out of class for this. Your dad’ll want to know too.”

“What?” Karkat, incredulous as he looked around like he expected his mystery attacker to come around the corner, guns blazing. 

“Come on,” Dave said, starting towards the front office. “Let’s play hookie for now.”

Karkat jogged to keep up with him, Dave’s feet moving too fast as he went into the office, already texting Slick on his phone.

Dave: ok ok i think i figured something out about the case, something major  
Dave: how fast can you make it to the school?  
SS: This had better be good, kid. I’ll be expecting a major break through from you, like, let’s say, computer codes or map coordinates.  
Dave: wrong case dude  
Dave: i meant about karkat and who might have just tried to murder him  
SS: You think you found out who did that?  
Dave: probably. it all fits together nicely but ill tell you all about it when you get here  
SS: I’ll be there in a minute.  
SS: Don’t do anything stupid!  
Dave: thats a pretty big ask but ok

“Dave, wait!” Karkat called out to him as Dave threw open the doors to the front office, startling Officer Johnson, who was behind the long counter, his eye on several screens that showed views of the school. Dave immediately turned to Warren’s corner room. “You can’t just barge in there!”

“Hell yeah I can,” Dave said, and he threw open that door too as Karkat reluctantly followed after him.

Warren was in the middle of a phone call, but when he caught sight of Dave’s face, he sighed, said, “I’m going to have to call you back,” and hung up. He rubbed hard at his face. “Dave,” he said, not even trying to use the fake name anymore. “There’d better be a good reason for this.”

Officer Johnson poked his head into the room curiously. “What’s going on in here?” He asked. 

“Great,” Dave said. “You should stay. Police are fucking good for stuff like this, right?”

Warren kept rubbing at his eyes as he sighed again. “You’re not exactly subtle, are you?”

“There’s time for that later,” Dave waved away the man’s concerns, on fire with the knowledge that kept running through his mind, trying to find a flaw in his reasoning but coming up blank. He was right, he knew he was; he could feel it. “Slick is on his way here now, and I don’t think I can legally say anything else until he arrives, legal counsel and all that shit, you know?”

Warren perked up, his eyes sharpening. “What do you know?”

“I can’t say, not yet,” Dave answered, checking the time on his phone. 8:11am. He wondered how many road laws Slick was prepared to break to get here the fastest. 

“Can I at least assume that whatever this is, it involves Karkat?” The principal asked wryly. 

“Gold star,” Dave rambled. “Your powers of deduction astound us all, Sherlock. Fuck, what am I saying? That wasn’t even fucking clever. Shit.” Dave was getting amped up, and his mouth was running without any conscious input. “Like, what the fuck? Of course this involves Karkat, I just figured out who tried to kill him.”

This was of course when the doors to the office were thrown open for a second time and Agent Slick strode in, wearing a trench coat, his hat pulled low over his scarred face. “Dave?” He all but growled, “This had better be fuckin’ good.”

The room was feeling crowded with all of these people in it. Dave grabbed for his rapidly deteriorating focus, blinking beneath his shades. His hands were shaking with excitement. He felt jittery and on edge. 

Karkat helped him reorient himself with a short word. “Dave,” he said, “Focus.”

Dave took a deep, centering breath. “You’ve been looking in the wrong place,” he told his captive audience. “What happened last week wasn’t random but it also wasn’t some unknown attacker out for blood. It’s the same exact guy that got him all those years ago.”

“What?” Karkat said, shocked. 

Slick said nothing, but he crossed his arms over his chest intently as Dave went on.

“It’s got to be,” Dave said. “It can’t be a student because they couldn’t have gotten past the front doors without someone noticing them purchasing the right equipment and building their doomsday device in the garage. Plus any teacher or student would have left signs behind them, DNA or something. No, this was professional, well thought out, and aimed specifically at Karkat and Karkat alone in a way that was intended to take him out and maybe a few others too if they got lucky.” Dave paused to suck in another breath before continuing in a rush. “Don’t you see? It’s the exact same MO as before.”

“Wait,” Karkat said, gnawing at his lower lip with stress. “I wasn’t targeted the first time. I was just the unlucky student that they grabbed.”

“Which cements my point,” Dave explained. “Karkat, the guy that Turned you only made one mistake. He left you alive. That wasn’t supposed to ever happen.” Dave shook his head, forcing the words out though they stuck in his throat. “You weren’t supposed to survive. You were the one loose end he never intended to leave behind.”

“So he came back to end it,” Slick said, nodding along with Dave. 

“I think so,” Dave said. “It makes sense. He attacked in a school, targeted Karkat in a way that would only affect him and him alone for the purpose of both killing him and releasing another Turned werewolf in a school. That’s not something a student or teacher would risk, or any local families with an anti-wolf vendetta. Not with other kids on the line.”

“But,” Karkat protested. 

“Wait,” Warren interrupted, his face serious. “Let him finish.”

Dave went on. “So he waited long enough for things to die down, for everyone protecting Karkat to settle into their routine, for us to get complacent with expecting everything to turn out okay, and then he struck again with a perfectly executed plan.”

“But why?” Karkat demanded to know, his voice choked. “Why come after me again in the first place? Why not just let me be?” His voice was heartbreaking, nearly pleading. 

“Because,” Dave forced out. “I know people like this. I know how they work.”

“Dave,” Slick said, his voice a warning to not say more.

“Your survival would have itched like a splinter under the skin,” Dave said, ignoring Slick. His eyes were only for Karkat, whose face had gone pale. “Especially once the doctors got hold of you, picking and prying for the disease that he prides himself in having, figuring out all of the lycanthropy secrets that he alone was supposed to know. Creating another wolf was never on his radar. Your survival was an accident in more ways than one, an accident that he couldn’t stand, so he tried to kill you by repeating the exact same motif that he used the first time. Force you to Turn, kill a few students if possible, and then have the police kill you to end it all.” Dave finished up with a final biting statement. “That’s why this happened. That’s who did this. It isn’t someone new—its someone old.”

Slick was nodding, faintly prideful. “There ya go, kid,” he said. “That’s how it’s done.”

“Could he be right?” Officer Johnson asked, fidgeting in place form where he stood. “We weren’t even looking at this being the original wolf. The captain was so convinced it was someone new.”

“No,” Dave said, shaking his head. “It can’t be, not when everything fits together like this. That’s not simple coincidence or circumstance.”

Karkat was looking at the ground, his eyebrows furrowed. “I always thought I’d never run into that monster again,” he said, vehement. “And I thought, if I ever did, I’d… know, I guess. Somehow. I’d know who he was.” He let out a humorless laugh. “At the very least I thought I’d smell him.”

“He hid himself well,” Dave told him gently. “Just like last time. He’s the only one who knows exactly how to hide from you.”

Karkat shrugged, looking up at Warren and Officer Johnson with watery eyes. “Could it be true?”

And suddenly Dave was hit with the realization about what this meant to Karkat, and he hated it. He’d been so caught up in being right that he hadn’t considered what this fucking meant to his friend. He imagined being free from Bro for a few years, thinking that he was finally free, only to have Bro reappear, try to kill him, and fuck up his idea of safety forever. Shit, it had only been six months since Dave had been free and the thought was still almost unbearable. 

“Karkat?” Dave said softly. Neither Warren nor Officer Johnson answered Karkat’s question.

“I think we’re done with this for today,” Slick interrupted, coughing as he stepped forward, the long coat swirling around his feet. “I’ve got to run this by my team and Johnson, I know you’ve got to get this to your boss. And Mr. Vantas needs to be informed as well.” He rubbed at the edge of his jaw with his knuckles, scratching at the dark scruff there as he studied Dave with a keen eye. “And I don’t think it would due for either of them to be in school today, not after a shock like this.”

Dave could already feel the crash coming as his adrenaline wore off. It was getting harder to focus his eyes on single objects, the scene before him blurring together as the migraine began to settle into his frontal lobe, a not so gentle reminder of all the times he’d been hit in the head as a child. “I’m fine,” he said anyway. “The last thing I want to do is spend the day sitting alone in your office while you do secret cop stuff.”

“Well someone has to keep an eye on you,” Slick told him. “I trust you alone as much as I trust a toddler with a pistol.” 

“Fair,” Dave muttered, his vision blurring. “God, my head is killing me.”

“Dave?” Karkat asked, concerned. 

“It’s just a migraine,” Dave waved away Karkat’s concern. “It’ll go away in an hour or so. Maybe two if I’m really lucky.”

“Dave,” Karkat repeated stubbornly. 

“Come on, kid,” Slick motioned over his shoulder at the door. “I’ll drive you to my office.”

Dave’s shoulders sank, sullen and resolved to a miserable next few hours. 

“Wait,” Karkat called out. “He can stay with me and my dad. We’ll look after him.”

“You?” Slick barked out a laugh. 

Karkat stood his ground. “He’s been to my house before. It’s the safest place in town.”

“He was only at your house because he snuck his ass out,” Slick protested gruffly, still pissed. 

“It’s still the safest place to be, probably including your secret ‘safe house’” Karkat argued. “You can pick him up after you’re done at the office. Sitting alone in a chair with a migraine isn’t good for anyone.”

“And your dad?” Slick asked sarcastically. 

“Will be fine with it,” Karkat promised. “He’d probably be overjoyed to see Dave again, since he hasn’t shut up about him since the attack.”

“Really?” Dave asked, not quite believing it.

“Yeah,” Karkat answered. “He’s probably busy kitting you a hero sweater right now.”

“Not about that,” Dave quickly corrected. “You really want me to come over again?”

Karkat blushed, his cheeks coloring scarlet as he said hopefully, “Maybe.”

Dave just grinned stupidly at Karkat as Slick let out a frustrated groan from the side. 

“Jesus,” The fed complained. “Watching this is going to give me a fuckin’ migraine.”

“What?” Karkat snapped, overly defensive as his shoulders hunched. “I really don’t see the issue here.”

“For one,” Slick grunted. “My car can’t fit more than two people, so technically I don’t see a way for either of you pair of miscreants to scram out of here on your own.”

“I,” Officer Johnson began, but was cut off viciously by Slick.

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” The marshal growled out, glaring at the other officer as he leveled a single finger at him. “None of this is your fuckin’ business anyways.”

“I wasn’t going to add anything into this shit pile of a negotiation,” Johnson defended himself tersely as his radio beeped. “I was only going to say that Mr. Vantas just arrived.”

Slick opened his mouth, shook his head, then closed it again, baring teeth. “One day,” He told Dave, his eye glittering with warning. “And if you fuck this up in any way I’m your phone privileges for a month!”

“Deal,” Dave said at once, the lights overhead pulsing in time with his heartbeat as his migraine spiked painfully. He was in no mood to argue for once, content to let Karkat do the talking for him.

“And take some goddamn medication for you headache,” Slick ordered, squaring his shoulders as he studied Dave’s completely blank expression. “I won’t allow you to sit there and suffer just to spite me.”

“Trust me,” Dave promised. “It’s not to spite you.” He didn’t actually like hurting; he’d much rather not have to deal with the migraine, but at the same time the echo of his Bro’s voice picked at him, telling him to power through the ache in his skull, to not point it out, to not bring any attention to his hurting. But fuck that—he was allowed to complain now. “So get me some goddamn pills then.”

“No cursing in my office!” Principal Warren spoke up from behind his desk, all but forgotten. 

“Fuck off,” Dave muttered as loudly as he could, speaking on automatic as his vision went fuzzy. “Shit.”

“Dave?” Karkat asked, concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Dave answered, not looking at him. “It’s in my head. It’ll pass.” He shrugged again. “It’s just head trauma returning to haunt me.”

Karkat’s expression soured at that until his gaze lingered on the scar that graced the side of Dave’s head. “Okay,” he allowed. “What can I do to help?”

“Get me out of here,” Dave offered. “It’s too loud and bright.”

At that moment Karkat’s dad walked in, looking concerned as his eyes immediately sought out his son. “Karkat?”

“I’m fine dad,” Karkat answered distractedly, still looking at Dave. “Can I ask a favor?”

“Sure,” Mr. Vantas answered, his broad shoulders relaxing as he saw that no one was bleeding or anything. “I was told to come and pick you up?”

“Yeah, about that,” Karkat began. “Can Dave come with us? He has a migraine and can’t exactly go with Agent Slick right now.”

“You bet your ass he can,” Slick argued, putting his foot down. “I am perfectly capable of looking after him.

“Shut up,” Karkat snapped again, and Dave grinned. “Not in a police station you can’t.”

“You tell him, Karkat,” Dave said appreciatively, mumbling to keep his voice down. It didn’t work, the words bouncing around loudly in his head. 

Mr. Vantas turned to Dave and his son in shock, taking in Dave’s subdued nature. “Of course,” he answered. “He can spend the day with us, sure thing. But I don’t understand why this requires both of you to leave school?” He ended it as a question, his voice going up in curiosity. 

Karkat answered him, his voice coldly serious. “Dave also pretty much figured out who tried to kill me last week. And that isn’t good news so don’t get excited.”

“What?” Mr. Vantas exclaimed, shocked. “Well then… Who did it? Who tried to kill my son?” He asked in an almost growl, his eyes on the cops in the room, his hands in fists at his sides. 

“The same guy as last time,” Slick answered, his eye glittering. “He’s trying to tie up loose ends.”

Mr. Vantas slammed his hands down flat on the Principal’s desk, the sound echoing. "_Karkat is not a loose end_.”

Dave fought back a wince at the unexpected noise, taking in the steel that flashed in Mr. Vantas’ stony expression.

“We know that,” Officer Johnson told Karkat’s dad. “We’ll brief you later. For now just get these kids out of here while we figure out what to do next.”

Mr. Vantas nodded, rubbing at his chin. “Karkat, Dave, let’s go.” He turned to Slick, his eyes dark. “We’ll talk later.”

Agent Slick nodded in return, and Dave felt Karkat’s gentle fingers tug at his sleeve, dragging his attention back to the room and off of the pain in his head. Karkat didn’t quite dare to touch him, but it was enough to ground him back in the moment. The pain itself wasn’t anything beyond irritating to Dave; it was the rest of the symptoms that were harder to deal with, the way the lights shone brighter than they should have, surrounded by blinking, smudgy halos even with his shades, the way noises echoed, and the way his focus scattered into a dozen different disparate ways to the point that actually understanding what was being said was difficult. 

“Dave?” Karkat said, and Dave blinked slowly at him, his unfocused gaze hidden. 

“Yeah?” He answered anyway.

“Come on, follow me.” Karkat released his sleeve.

Dave hated feeling like this. His head was stuffed with cotton and a dull but persistent pounding rang from between his ears as he nodded at a clearly angry but still worried Slick and followed after Karkat and Mr. Vantas. 

Dave kept silent the whole way out of the school. His mind might have been experiencing technical difficulties but he could still fucking think through the fog just fine. 

“How often do you get headaches?” Karkat asked softly, his scratchy voice just above a whisper. 

“Maybe once or twice a month,” Dave told him, glancing across the brilliantly lit parking lot with a hand up to shield his eyes from the blinding glare. Shit that was bright. And he still didn’t know what the fuck Mr. Vantas’ car even looked like so he put his head down like the sunlight was physically weighing down on him, teeth gritted. His optic nerves were protesting loudly but he ignored them. 

Mr. Vantas pulled out his keys with a jangle and hit a button. There was a light beep and a flash of headlights from a square, gray, and boxy car that looked exactly like a car that Mr. Vantas would own until Dave spotted the solid steel roll cage welded into the car’s frame through the large windows.

Karkat opened the back door n dot in without a word. Dave copied him from the other side. The passenger seat was occupied by a massive box of papers and forms from the board office so Dave and Karkat together were squished into the back seat. 

Dave reached up and wrapped his fingers around one of the bars of steel that surrounded him, the metal cold under his fingers. “Overkill much?” He asked wryly.

“My dad’s paranoid,” Karkat fake-whispered back, buckling in. His leg was barely an inch away from Dave’s knee.

Dave let his eyes close as Mr. Vantas started the car. The darkness helped his migraine as he struggled not to focus on how close Karkat was to him, or how being surrounded by the roll cage made him feel trapped instead of safe. He couldn’t help but if Karkat felt the same way, trapped by every aspect of his own safety, surrounded by constant reminders that people wanted him dead. 

Dave felt the car rumble to life beneath him, the slight jolt as it went into gear at odds with how silent the engine ran. How much money had Mr. Vantas poured into this unassuming vehicle? Dave wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but when he peeked his eyes open he saw the speedometer went up to 200 mph. 

He closed his eyes again, breathing deeply during the brief drive over to Karkat’s house. No one said anything the entire journey. It would have been awkward if Dave had cared about something like that. 

He only opened his eyes again when he felt the car slow to a gentle halt and then cut off. Karkat’s house looked different in the daylight, the bright paint vivid and unfaded, the lawn neatly trimmed. Immediately Dave felt that much more out of place. He knew he didn’t belong in a neighborhood like this, much less a house like this one. 

“I’m not intruding, am I?” He asked quietly, the first words spoken since they’d left the school. 

“Of course not,” Mr. Vantas scoffed. “Dave, you’re always welcome here.”

For some reason that just made Dave feel worse. Karkat shot him a worried glance but said nothing. 

He got out of the car. He could feel his phone vibrating from where Slick was probably texting him but ignored it. His eyes were only for Karkat, patiently uncertain, waiting for a cue. 

“Follow me,” Karkat said, also uncomfortable and trying to hide it. 

Dave followed the two Vantases up to the front door. This time he could clearly see the camera at the door, its red light blinking as it recorded them. 

“Don’t worry,” Mr. Vantas said, catching Dave staring at the camera. “That’s the only one, and only we have access to the footage.” He unlocked the door, each of the three locks clicking. “It’s just a precaution.”

“I’m not worried about the footage,” Dave answered honestly. “I trust you not to upload my image to YouTube or Instagram.”

“Out of curiosity,” Mr. Vantas said, opening the door. “What would happen if someone did?”

“Dad!” Karkat complained. “You can’t just ask things like that.”

“It’s okay,” Dave answered, shrugging. “You’d never see me again. Either Slick would immediately squirrel me away to fuckoffsville USA or I’d be dead.”

Karkat didn’t react; he’d heard Dave deadpan the truth before, but Mr. Vantas winced as he stepped inside the house. 

“Really?” Karkat’s dad asked quietly. “You situation is that bad?”

“I don’t lie,” Dave said simply. “And my ‘situation’ is fucked up.”

“I’ll believe you,” Mr. Vantas said, and Dave went inside the house. It was just as grand as it had been the first time. The school pictures lovingly framed along the wall made Karkat blush as Dave grinned at them. 

“Alright,” Mr. Vantas said. “I’ll leave you two be, but, ground rules,” he said, winking. “No going into the basement, and no locked bedroom doors. Actually, just stay downstairs where I can keep an eye on you, okay?”

Karkat groaned, blushing even more. Dave kept his face carefully neutral at the suggestion that had his mind racing down paths he really shouldn’t think down right now. 

“Ignore him,” Karkat suggested. “He lives to embarrass me.”

“Ah, what else are fathers for?” Mr. Vantas laughed, his teeth flashing in a grin. “I love you, Karkat.”

“Love you too dad,” Karkat sighed, his ears still scarlet. 

The casual display of affection caught Dave off guard. Was this really how normal families acted with each other? In an odd way he both rejected and longed for that kind of easy care, but he knew better than to get his hopes up so Dave pushed the idea of being part of a family one day to the back of his mind. 

Mr. Vantas went into the study to do paperwork, leaving Karkat and Dave alone.

“Come on,” Karkat said, waling into the living room. “I’d bother you about helping me with my algebra homework but not when you’re clearly hurting.”

“I’m not,” Dave said automatically. 

“Yes, you are,” Karkat argued. “I can tell. You get quiet when you’re in pain.”

Dave opened his mouth and then closed it again, caught between what he thought of himself and what pieces Karkat had put together on his own. 

“Nothing to say to that?” Karkat asked seriously, and Dave just shrugged. “That proves my point. You’re quiet when you’re hurting. You don’t ramble on and make jokes to fill the silence.”

“Its just a headache,” Dave defended himself, uncomfortable with the idea of anyone knowing he wasn’t at 100%, a leftover from Bro for sure, but a hard habit to unlearn all the same. 

“From head trauma,” Karkat shot back at him, using his own words against him. 

“Yes, so?”

“Dave,” Karkat sighed, and then he fell onto the couch. “Just sit down before you fall over.”

“I think you have a severe misunderstanding of what a migraine does,” Dave joked, but he did sit down at the other side of the couch as Karkat flicked through his smartphone for a second, scowling at something he saw. 

“What?” Dave asked curiously.

Karkat shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said flatly, then, “Tell me how you guessed who tried to kill me.”

Dave shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, expressionless. “Tell me why you didn’t think of him first.”

Karkat’s eyes flashed up to meet his, nearly glowing. “I hate trying to work around all of your secrets,” he said. 

“I’m sorry,” Dave said, meaning it. He held Karkat’s red gaze. “Maybe one day I can tell you them all.” Maybe he could one day, if he was lucky and Bro sloppy. Maybe one day he wouldn’t have to choke back the real questions he wanted to ask, the real words he wanted to say. His head was pounding. 

“But not now?” Karkat asked.

“Not now,” Dave admitted, his fingers curling against his knees to stop himself from reaching for Karkat’s hand. “Why didn’t you consider the attacker being the first guy? That seems like the most obvious solution.”

“I did,” Karkat looked down. “Just not seriously.”

“Why not?”

“I just,” Karkat broke off to shrug, his shoulder slumping. “I always thought I’d never run into him again. After… after my old school he vanished into the wind. It’s been years since then and no one has been able to locate him.” His fingers picked at loose threads in the arm of the couch. “And I always thought, and this is stupid I know, that if he was nearby—I’d know. I’d just… I’d fucking know, alright?” He laughed helplessly, just a single exhale of breath. “I’d fucking smell him or something, or just know in some magical bullshit werewolf way.”

“But you didn’t know?” Dave asked. 

“Duh,” Karkat rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t have opened my fucking locker if I had the faintest clue something was wrong.” 

“Scent?” Dave asked, curious. “Is that a valid way to tell who might have done it?”

“Maybe if I could get near enough to sniff around my old locker without dying of wolfsbane exposure,” Karkat said wryly. “I already thought of that one, and it’s a long shot considering how many other people walk past that point every single day.”

Dave grunted in response, thinking. “You were going to say something earlier but didn’t,” he mentioned. “What was it?”

“Oh,” Karkat said darkly, and his hands were suddenly in fists at his sides. “Don’t tell my dad this, but if I ever meet the man that did this to me face to face—I’ll kill him.” he looked up at Dave. “Is it the same for you?”

“What?” Dave asked, not understanding. 

“You’re running from someone,” Karkat said, matter-of-fact. “Someone who hurt you.” He motioned at Dave’s hands and head, at the scars that littered his pale skin. “If you could find them and kill them and finally be free… would you?”

Maybe Slick had been right. This is what Dave got for not keeping his mouth shut. What else had Karkat figured out? “No,” Dave said decisively. He didn’t even have to think about it. “I wouldn’t. I don’t think I could.”

“Hypothetically though,” Karkat tried again.

“No,” Dave said, shaking his head. “It’s not a question of skill or legality. I just couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Karkat asked, because to him this was so black and white. He didn’t have to deal with the shades of gray Dave was perpetually drowning in. He couldn’t kill Bro, _he couldn’t_, not even if Bro was tied to a chair with Dave holding a gun.

“I’m just not a killer,” Dave answered, and that was the truth even if it wasn’t the truth Karkat was looking for. That was the one thing Bro had failed to instill into his psyche. Dave wasn’t a killer. 

“I didn’t think I was either, and I’m not talking about me as a wolf,” Karkat said softly. “But I can’t make myself stop thinking about it.” He said it like he would a shameful secret. “He’s a monster the world would be better off without.”

“I know,” Dave said, and they sat there in agreement.

Karkat raised his fist, “To our monsters,” he said grandly. “May we one day defeat them.”

Dave grinned and reached up to bump his knuckles against Karkat’s, his skin singing at the brief contact as he hoped that one day, his words would be true. “To our monsters,” he repeated. “May they rest in fucking peace.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot going on in the background of this chapter as parts are getting set up to happen. The good news is I might get the next chapter up in just a few days! And it'll be action-packed! :) 
> 
> Karkat's dad having a rollcage is just a fun (Sad) fact, and as a migraine sufferer myself I sympathize with Dave's headache. Sweet, sweet Karkat, too good for this world, too pure even as he admits to wanting to kill someone. I love these two messed up kids trying to do the best they can.


	11. chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL ABOARD THE ANGST TRAIN!!!!!!!
> 
> new chapter hecky heah

It was all over the news when Dave woke up, splashed across the television screen from the only TV in the safe house in red letters. Slick sat in the arm chair in front of the unused entertainment system, glaring at the screen with weariness. 

BREAKING NEWS! The headline read, POSSIBLE SERIAL KILLER STILL AT LARGE—VITIMS MAY NUMBER OVER A HUNDRED.

Dave froze at the sight of the screen, sickness twisting through him. 

Slick turned his head to stare solemnly at Dave, who watched with a blank expression. “Well,” Slick sighed. “We managed to keep it quiet for over a full month. That’s longer than we’d projected. The media can be a terrible thing.” 

There was a woman on screen crying into the camera, clutching a photograph of someone Dave recognized as one of the 22 people he’d identified. He didn’t need to read the news title to know who she was, he could see the familial resemblance in her face as she sobbed over her lost child. Dave’s heart felt heavy. His belly was full of broken glass. 

The camera panned over the other families standing united together, begging for justice, for closure, for answers. 

“He’s going to see this,” Dave forced himself to speak. “Bro’s going to be pissed… he’s going to know I turned on him.”

“Yes.” Slick didn’t bother lying. “He will.” The fed didn’t say anything about upped protection, guards, or suspended travel rights, but he did say, “Go back to sleep Dave. No school today.”

“Why?” Dave instantly argued, hating the idea of staying here for another second the walls were pressing in on him. 

“We have work to do,” Agent Slick answered. “I’ll wake you when the rest of my team gets here.”

Dave nodded, his neck stiff and his knees wobbly as he turned on his heel and strode into the kitchen as calmly as he could to throw up violently in the trash can. He was surprised to see that blood didn’t come up with the bile from the force. It felt like he’d been cut on the inside, heaving up all of his organs in retching mouthfuls of acid. When he was done he felt shaky and weak, ashamed that Slick must have heard him from the living room, but the fed thankfully left him alone in his misery as Dave mechanically tied the trash bag shut to try and contain the smell.

He went back into his room to pace the floor in quick steps. He wanted to run. 

Instead he texted Karkat.

Dave: i wont be there today  
Dave: sorry  
Dave: shit happened and slick has me on lockdown. im okay and everything should be fine  
Dave: theres just some stuff i have to do today that outranks school

Karkat’s reply was instant.

Karkat: THAT SUCKS MAN. WHAT KIND OF STUFF?  
Dave: case stuff. mine not yours.  
Karkat: DAMN.  
Karkat: IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP?  
Dave: no  
Dave: well maybe yes  
Dave: ill probably be really fucked up later so please take any dumbass thing i text you in response with a grain of salt. id like to say i wont mean it except that i probably will so ignore me please  
Karkat: YOU CAN’T WANT THAT, RIGHT?  
Dave: maybe. i dont know. i guess that depends on how bad things get  
Karkat: WHAT DO YOU DO? WHAT ‘CASE WORK’ COULD POSSIBLY BE WORTH THIS? WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF?  
Dave: two reasons  
Dave: one, its the price i pay for witness protections help. i give them info, they keep me alive  
Karkat: WAIT, I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO BE A WITNESS? YOU GIVE THEM INFORMATION?  
Dave: its a little bit of both. right now its mostly info because they havent caught  
Dave: nvm  
Dave: i cant exactly be a witness for a case that hasnt been started yet so right now its mainly info  
Dave: two,  
Dave: i dont do this for me. if this were about me id leave it be, but theres still people that i might be able to help  
Karkat: HOW DO YOU HELP THEM?  
Dave: i  
Dave: i cant answer that, sorry. i dont even know the answer or what words i can or cant say.  
Karkat: BUT YOU ARE HELPING PEOPLE, RIGHT?

Dave thought about the crying woman, the grieving mother who’s daughter Dave hadn’t saved. He’d just looked away and wished he lived in a different life as she screamed for help. He thought of the other families, of the idea of closure and its impossible promise of healing, the fucked up way that he was responsible for all of their suffering and yet Slick and the others thought he was the key to their salvation. 

It just wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. 

Dave: sometimes it isnt that easy karkat  
Dave: nothing is as black and white as you think

There was a pause in the oncoming text. Dave heard nothing but the sound of his own breathing until his phone vibrated again.

Karkat: YOU DO THIS THING, YOU KNOW, WHERE YOU SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM ANYTHING RESEMBLING A COMPLIMENT OR PROOF OF A GOOD DEED. WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR YOU TO BELIEVE THAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF HELPING SOMEONE ELSE?  
Dave: i might be helping them now but i hurt them first  
Dave: and what i did cant be forgiven. it blacks out anything good i might do in the future, even if i spend the rest of my goddamn life trying to make up for what i did

Karkat was tactful enough not to ask what Dave had done, but he still wasn’t finished. 

Karkat: I’M NOT SURE I BELIEVE THAT. ONE DEED, GOOD OR BAD, CAN’T HOLD THAT MUCH INFLUENCE.  
Dave: it wasnt one deed  
Dave: trust me, please, believe me when i say that there are things in this world that cant be forgiven or buried and these things leave stains that cant be wiped out.  
Karkat: HEY.  
Karkat: LISTEN.  
Karkat: I BRUTALLY MURDERED OVER THIRTY OF MY CLASSMATES, REMEMBER? IF ANYONE KNOWS ABOUT SINS THAT CAN’T BE WIPED AWAY, ITS ME.  
Dave: that wasnt you  
Karkat: MAYBE NOT MENTALLY, BUT I THINK YOU USE THAT WHOLE ‘that wasnt you’ EXCUSE AS A BLANKET TERM TO SEPARATE ME AND MY WOLF. WE ARE THE EXACT SAME BEING. WE SHARE THE SAME BODY. I AM HIM AND HE IS ME.  
Karkat: THEY DIED BY MY ACTIONS, BY MY FUCKING TEETH! I CAN’T ARGUE THAT I DIDN’T KILL THEM EVEN IF I PRAY THAT WASN’T TRUE.  
Karkat: AND OKAY, YOU MIGHT HAVE DONE SOMETHING BAD IN THE PAST, BUT SO DID I.  
Karkat: AND LOOK AT ME! YOU DON’T SEE ME LETTING IT TAKE OVER MY ENTIRE LIFE, BELIEVING THAT I’M NOT CAPABLE OF ANYTHING GOOD ANYMORE JUST BECAUSE A MONSTER DECIDED TO USE ME. 

Dave’s throat was hurting. How the hell did Karkat always know exactly what to say? 

It was on the tips of his fingers, a cruel answer, something sharp and cutting, a reflexive attempt to shove Karkat away so he couldn’t keep getting closer to the truth. A month ago he would have typed it out and severed all hope of a friendship or maybe even something more, but he was trying to be kinder to himself even when he didn’t think he was worth it, so he restrained himself enough to type out,

Dave: maybe i do use that as a blanket term for forgiveness, but theres one vital difference between me and you.  
Karkat: AND WHAT’S THAT?  
Dave: you didnt have a choice.  
Karkat: DID YOU?

Dave bit his lip and looked away. His fingers were shaking. 

And there it was, the crux of the issue about everything that had happened. Different people had told him different answers to this question. Slick thought he was innocent, false as that was, but Dave didn’t think that he was as guilty as Droog thought. Or was he? What was the definition for guilt here? Had he really had a fucking choice? 

Dave: no

Slick would probably sing hallelujah if he knew what Dave had just typed out, that first incredibly important step to accepting that he wasn’t an awful, irredeemable human being, but Slick could go fuck himself if he thought for even one second that things would be that easy.

Karkat: THEN HOW THE FUCK ARE WE DIFFERENT?

Good question.

Dave: you couldnt have changed anything. you couldnt have stopped the bad things from happening. i could have, and i didnt.  
Karkat: I DON’T BELIEVE THAT, THAT’S NOT YOU.  
Dave: believe me, its true  
Karkat: THEN DEFEND IT! PROVE IT, BECAUSE I DON’T, CAN’T, BELIEVE THAT YOU WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS.  
Dave: you know i cant do that. you already know too much.  
Karkat: THEN DON’T EXPECT ME TO ACCEPT IT. DIDN’T YOU JUST ASK ME TO TAKE EVERYTHING YOU SAY TODAY WITH A GRAIN OF SALT?  
Dave: fuck  
Karkat: I’M SORRY, DAVE, BUT IF YOU REFUSE TO SEE THE GOOD IN YOURSELF THEN I WILL HAVE TO TAKE UPON MYSELF THE INCREDIBLE TASK OF PROVING IT TO YOU, BECAUSE YOU’RE A GOOD FUCKING PERSON AND I CAN’T STAND THAT YOU THINK DIFFERENTLY.  
Dave: ok  
Dave: whatever. im not trying to convince you of anything—im just stating the facts  
Dave: and ive got to go now, ill text you later ok  
Karkat: RUNNING AWAY AGAIN? YOU KNOW, THE FIRST STEP MIGHT BE STAYING TO TALK THIS OUT RATHER THAN RUNNING AS SOON AS THE SHIT GETS SERIOUS.  
Dave: i  
Dave: i just cant, ok? not right now  
Dave: please  
Karkat: OKAY. BUT I WILL CONTACT YOU LATER AND YOU’D BETTER ANSWER.  
Dave: okay

Dave flipped his phone shut, breathing hard. How many reckless mistakes will it take to drive Karkat away from him under the weight of what he’s done? How many pieces until things start to click together like the shittiest of puzzles, a riddle from a diseased puppet spewing dying prophesies of death under a camera’s glare? Did he dare dream that one day Karkat would know the truth and not be horrified? Or worse, would pity light up his red eyes rather than hate and poison everything thereafter with its sticky false sweetness until everything had rotten away? 

There was a knock on the door. Dave could hear it from his bedroom, loud enough to rattle the window from its booming as Boxcars banged one oversized and meaty fist against the wood. Dave sighed, resigned to his fate. 

He went back out into the living room. The rest of Slick’s team was here, combing through piles of photographs as Deuce set up a fancy overclocked laptop in the corner. Droog was armed. Dave instantly spotted the subtle lump at his side that meant a shoulder holster. 

Slick at least had the decency to have left his gun in his room. “Dave?” The fed asked. “Are you ready?”

“What are these?” Dave asked blankly, like he didn’t already know the answer. 

“More missing persons,” Slick said gently. “Going back longer and covering a wider area than last time.”

Dave nodded. So they were tightening their net, weeding out more of Bro’s victims, looking in other nearby states as well for clues on who Dave might have seen in the apartment. 

“Don’t bother laying them out,” Dave said, sliding into a chair at the table “Just hand them to me.”

“Clubs,” Slick grunted to the shorter man at the laptop. “You ready?”

“Yep!” The fed said cheerfully. “We’re ready to begin.”

Droog was busy organizing the photographs into piles as Slick sorted through them. Boxcars lurked like a mountain in the corner, watching silently. Dave gulped when slick handed him the first photograph, but that was okay because it was a man Dave didn’t know. This sad pattern continued for nearly twenty minutes, Dave neatly stacking the discarded photos aside, before Slick wordlessly handed him the next one and the man’s face struck him like a punch to the gut. In life he’d been a large man, thickly muscled and brawny until Bro had flayed him open like a fish. Here’s the thing—Bro’s victims rarely cried until after he’d won. It was almost like they could sense that tears would have no effect on someone as cold as Bro, or they were spiteful and strong-willed enough to keep their suffering to themselves as much as possible, wary of the cameras they knew were on them and the sick freaks who were paying to watch Bro break them. In the end they all cried. But this man had sobbed before Bro had ever touched him with the knife, and Bro had called Dave in to look. “Look at this sorry fucker,” Bro had said, carelessly dancing the knife across the man’s skin with just enough force to scratch but not draw blood. “Crying like a pissbaby.” Then had come the warning as Bro dug the knife in deeper this time, the man staring at Dave the entire time, begging for help. “If I ever catch so much as a single tear out of you, you’ll be the next one I strap to this chair, understood?”

Dave had nodded mechanically. He’d have agreed to anything as long as it got him out of that room that smelled like blood no matter how well he’d scrubbed it afterwards. 

“Dave?” Slick asked softly, bringing him back to himself. 

Dave blinked away the shadow of blood underneath his shades. “Yeah?” He croaked. 

“Do you know him?” Slick asked patiently, drawing the answers out of him. 

“What do you fucking think?” Dave spat back, suddenly venomous. “Why are we doing this? What difference does it make?”

“Kid,” Slick tried.

“No,” Dave snapped. “No, don’t feed me some bullshit about closure! All we’re doing is reopening old wounds and causing even more pain to the people we’re supposed to be helping.”

“Don’t think of it like that then,” Slick told him as Droog crossed his arms over his chest. “Think of it as tightening the noose around Bro’s neck. Every person you identify is another mark against him.”

“And we already have enough people for any jury in the country sentence him to death,” Dave argued. “Every other person we tack to his name now is just giving him more credit, credit that he wants.” And he could argue this all day. If Bro went down the legal way he’d grin over every person the cops pinned on him, boasting that there’d be others the feds would never find. 

But Slick changed the tone again, vying for his sense of shame. “Then think of the people who want to know what happened to their loved ones,” he asked. 

“They already know,” Dave said coldly. “They’re_ dead_. The details don’t fucking matter.”

“If it were you, would you think the same?” Slick demanded, his voice hard. 

Dave froze, because Slick didn’t know this but Dave had already experienced exactly what these families were going through, and with Dirk’s name screaming in his mind it was hard not admit that no, he didn’t want to know the fucking details. It was bad enough just to guess. 

“Fine,” Dave all but yelled, grabbing for the next pile of photographs and spreading them out between his fingers like a stack of cards only to immediately discard them. They scattered across the floor, a sea of lost faces. He reached for another stack. “I’ll do this your way, motherfuckers.” This time he flung the photos down within three seconds. They fluttered to the ground, adding to the mess he was making as Dave swung his arm through the stack of photos he’d already looked through to add them to the chaos, more faces flung around. He couldn’t stand the feeling of the glossy photo paper smearing beneath his fingertips so he ripped a random photo in half. The sound of the paper tearing in half was shockingly loud. 

“Dave!” Slick yelled, raising his voice. 

Dave tore through another stack of photos, frantic. He threw them up in the air and they flew around him on an invisible wind, dancing around his head. 

“DAVE!” Slick reached out for him but Dave jumped away like his touch burned.

He went to throw down the next stack of pictures but the woman’s face on top stopped him, so he carefully picked up her photo as everything inside of him went deadly silent. The photos he’d thrown settled on the floor around him. It looked like a hurricane had torn through the room and in the stillness that came after Dave was left standing alone, his hands in fists at his sides. 

“I know her,” Dave admitted, speaking into the shocked silence. He gestured at the photo that had set him off, the only one untouched on the table. “Him too. Probably I know a lot of the faces I haven’t gotten to yet, but how is this helping them? How is this _helping anybody_?”

“Dave,” Slick said again, and this time his voice was gentle as he stepped closer. “I know you’re hurting, but this isn’t the way to go about it.”

“Fuck you,” Dave choked out, shaking. “Take whatever shit you want to say to me next and shove it up your ass.”

“Hey,” Slick said softly, palms out like Dave was a feral animal he was trying to calm. 

In that instant, Dave hated the man. Heat burned in his eyes, blurring his vision. 

Slick kept slowly stepping closer, full of endless patience and understanding that Dave couldn’t fucking stand. He wanted anger. He wanted hatred. He expected the stinging shock of a backhanded blow, a fight, something fierce and violent and brutal, so Dave didn’t quite comprehend the overwhelming gentleness of the embrace that Slick locked him in.

This wasn’t like when Karkat had hugged him as Dave stood shaking. Slick wasn’t the tallest man but he was still an inch or so taller than Dave and he was gruff and smelled like cigar smoke and aftershave, and where Karkat had been full of a shared closeness, something earned, Slick’s embrace was rougher, hard but grounding. Dave blinked, confused, but he didn’t pull away.

“Easy,” Slick said to him. “I know this is hard. I know we’re asking for a lot. I know you’re still full of anger and you don’t know who to aim it at. Just breathe. Focus. Remember why you’re here.”

The words forced Dave back to what had driven him to break his bedroom window, dangling by his fingertips in the air, the fire escape too far away to reach without a little hardcore parkour 24 stories up. And the way his legs had ached worse than the stab wound in his shoulder, the skin split open and raw as he left behind bloody handprints on the rotting side paneling.

“I’m here because I couldn’t live there any longer,” Dave forced out, the words burning on the way out. “He was going to kill me.”

“Is that the only reason?” Slick asked gently. “Your own safety?”

“No,” Dave admitted brokenly, though he’d never say why. “But I just want this to be over.” He didn’t care that the rest of the Midnight Crew were watching. He didn’t care about anything. His anger had left him floundering in numbness. 

Slick released him and held him at arm’s length, his eye piercing and full of questions. 

“I wish I could tell you more,” Dave said. “I wish I could tell you exactly where he buried the bodies but I never learned where, just that it was out in the desert somewhere.” Bro’d return with a shovel and red dirt crusted under his nails and he hit Dave the one time he’d asked why. “I wish you’d find him already and end this. I wish this was easier for me.” He looked Slick directly in his face. “And I wish you didn’t care so _fucking_ much.”

“Dave,” Slick said, wounded as behind him Droog made an angry noise. 

Dave ignored him. “I was just supposed to be a job to you,” He spat out cruelly. “I wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a means to an end. Your star fucking witness and nothing else.”

“Well you sure went and fucked that, didn’t ya?” Slick told him, scoffing. “Like anyone with an ounce of decency could take one look at you and not fucking care.”

Dave shook his shoulder free of Slick’s hand, but the worst was over and they both knew it. The fight had gone out of him but stubbornness remained. “Don’t,” Dave asked, desperate. “Don’t fucking pity me.”

“You deserve more than shit,” Slick said, throwing his arms wide. “But you’ve still got to fucking _earn_ it, kid. You want the world to treat you better? Treat it better first.”

“How?” Dave asked. 

Slick motioned at the sea of pictures around them. “You can start by helping out a few more families find out what happened to their kids, to their brothers and sisters, to their fathers and mothers. You can start by giving back a little.”

“Why?” Dave asked. “I’ve always treated the world as fairly as I could and it never gave me anything but blood in return.”

“Do it for you,” Slick asked. “Do it for yourself.” He looked Dave in the eyes. “Do it to be the person I know you wanna be.”

Dave signed, his breath letting out as his shoulders slumped, defeated. He’d reached the thin line of pushing back till he snapped or giving in, and he didn’t feel like making things hard as possible anymore, not today at least. “Okay,” He said, sitting back down at the table. “Okay. I’ll try.”

Slick handed him the next photo. “Dave,” he said. “Trying is all we can ever do.”

…

It took a few hours to go through the rest of the photos. Some of them went back nearly ten years from as far away as Oklahoma City or the Mexican Border. A few were even from Arizona. There was no rhyme or reason to them. Even after all these years Dave still wasn’t sure exactly is had been about these people that had caught Bro’s fancy. 

After Clubs Deuce had entered in the last name to match the final face Dave had identified, Dave went back to his room. He could still hear them talking through the walls as he pulled up Karkat’s number. It was still during their lunch hour at school, but there wasn’t a lot of time left so Dave made his fingers hurry.

Dave: yo  
Dave: im done are you there?

The reply was instant. 

Karkat: HOW DID YOUR MYSTERY LEGAL TASK GO?  
Dave: like shit  
Dave: i kinda freaked the fuck out and started throwing things in the beginning  
Dave: ok maybe that sounds worse than it was but its true. i thought slick was going to hit me for a moment but all the fucker did was hug me  
Dave: which also freaked me out but in a different way  
Karkat: HE WAS GOING TO HIT YOU!!!!  
Dave: what no  
Dave: not slick. i guess im just used to the idea of people hitting me for being a little shit and for a moment i expected him to but he didnt even do anything angry even though i clearly deserved his anger because and i reiterate—i was being a little shit and freaked the fuck out over something that should have been basic by now  
Karkat: DAVE…  
Dave: what  
Karkat: NEVER MIND. ARE YOU OKAY NOW?  
Dave: im getting there slowly  
Dave: just keep talking to me and ill calm down  
Karkat: OKAY. THE LEAST I CAN DO IS TAKE A PAGE OUT OF YOUR BOOK AND INFO DUMP A MOUNTAIN OF USELESS SHIT INTO THIS ONGOING CONVERSATION.  
Karkat: SO GUESS WHAT?  
Dave: what  
Karkat: THERE’S TWO GIANT AND KIND OF PROBLEMATIC THINGS THAT I FOUND OUT ABOUT THIS MORNING AND LIKE YOU I MIGHT ALSO BE FREAKING THE FUCK OUT ABOUT THEM.  
Dave: oh shit really? whats fucking you up?  
Karkat: I WAS GOING TO WAIT TO TELL YOU IN PERSON BUT I GUESS TEXTS WILL HAVE TO DO FOR NOW.  
Karkat: THE FIRST IS THAT I’VE BEEN PERSONALLY INVITED TO MAKE AN APPEARANCE AS PART OF A NEWS INTERVIEW THAT’S BEEN COVERING MY MOST RECENT MURDER ATTEMPT. I’VE BEEN ASKED TO APPEAR LIVE AND SUBMIT MYSELF TO WHAT BASICALLY COUNTS AS AN INTERROGATION.  
Dave: youve been asked? that means you can say no right  
Karkat: TECHNICALLY YES, BUT HERE’S THE THING—I’M GOING TO SAY YES.  
Karkat: I THINK THE WORLD DESERVES TO SEE ME AS A REAL PERSON AND NOT AS THE MONSTER THE MEDIA PORTRAYED ME AS AFTER I FIRST TURNED. I MAY BE A WEREWOLF NOW BUT I’M STILL A PERSON. I KNOW THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT THERE WISH I’D DIED, BUT THAT’S BECAUSE THEY DON’T FUCKING KNOW ME. TO THEM I’M NOTHING BUT A NAME AND A FACE WITH A BODY COUNT.  
Karkat: AND I WANT TO CHANGE THAT. I’M /GOING/ TO CHANGE THAT.  
Karkat: AS APPREHENSIVE AS I AM I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A CHANCE THAT I CAN’T GIVE UP. IF I’M GOING TO FORCE THE WORLD TO ACCEPT ME I CAN’T RUN AND HIDE FROM THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY TO ACTUALLY GET OUT THERE AND PROVE TO THEM THAT I DESERVE THE CHANCE TO LIVE MY LIFE, THAT I DESERVE TO EXIST.  
Karkat: EVEN IF THE IDEA OF AN INTERVIEW SCARES ME SHITLESS.  
Dave: damn  
Dave: youre braver than me like i cant fucking stand the idea of having a camera watching me in any way shape or form  
Karkat: DO YOU THINK THAT’S A GOOD IDEA? GOING TO THE INTERVIEW?  
Dave: hell yes  
Dave: hell fucking yes  
Dave: get up there in front of those smarmy news people and fly off the fucking handle at them  
Dave: do a majestic pirouette of the fucking handle so hard that no one will ever come close to flipping such shit as you ever again. its it you. you are the master of shit flipping  
Dave: force them to take in your side of the story and dont back down from the fact that yes, bad shit happened, but that doesn’t immediately negate the fact that you deserve to be treated like a human being  
Karkat: GOD I WISH I COULD GET YOU TO BELIEVE THE VERY SAME WORDS YOU JUST TOLD ME.  
Karkat: YOU ARE SUCH A FUCKING HYPOCRITE DAVE.  
Dave: what no and besides were talking about you now  
Dave: whats the second thing?  
Karkat: NICE SUBJECT CHANGE THERE MR. SUBTLE  
Karkat: ANYWAY, THE SECOND THING IS THE ONE THAT’S REALLY BOTHERING ME BECAUSE IT PRESENTS AN ACUTE AND PRESSING ISSUE.  
Karkat: MY DAD HAS TO GO TO A MANDATORY SCHOOL BOARD MEETING IN TWO WEEKS.  
Dave: so?  
Karkat: SO THE FULL MOON IS IN TWO WEEKS DUMBASS!!!!!!  
Dave: oh shit so your dad wont be there for you?  
Karkat: I DON’T KNOW. THERE’S STILL A CHANCE THAT HE’LL CANCEL HIS SPOT AT THE MEETING BUT I DON’T WANT HIM TO GET IN TROUBLE WITH THE SCHOOL BOARD BECAUSE OF ME. HE’S ALREADY IN ENOUGH SHIT WITH THEM AS IT IS FOR SKIPPING WORK SO MUCH EVERY MONTH.  
Karkat: THAT’S PROBABLY THE WORST PART OF FULL MOONS, KNOWING THAT I’M DRAGGING MY DAD DOWN WITH ME.  
Karkat: I HATE THAT I’M HIS BALL AND CHAIN.  
Dave: as awful as that sounds it cant really be like that right? like theres a zero percent chance that hes in the same room as you turned or anything because not only would that be fucked up it would be stupid  
Karkat: DON’T BE AN IDIOT DAVE, OF COURSE HE’S NOT IN THE SAME FUCKING ROOM AS ME. I’D FUCKING KILL HIM IF HE WAS. MORON. THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS.  
Dave: i have the feeling that if i ask how that works you wont tell me  
Karkat: I GUESS WE BOTH HAVE SECRETS WE HAVE TO KEEP FROM EACH OTHER.  
Dave: i know  
Karkat: YEAH, SO THERE’S A CHANCE THAT HE’D HAVE TO LEAVE FOR A METING WHILE ON A FULL MOON AND FOR REASONS I CAN’T SAY THAT WOULD BE A VERY BAD THING.  
Dave: dont you have like a backup person for this?  
Karkat: TECHNICALLY YES, BUT THAT INVOLVES ME BEING LOCKED UP AT THE BIG STATE HOSPITAL UP IN SKAIA LIKE I WAS IN THE BEGGINNING BEFORE WE MOVED HERE AND FINISHED RENOVATING THE HOUSE. AND I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO THAT. I’D MUCH RATHER DO THIS AT HOME BUT IF IT’LL BE SAFER I GUESS I’LL HAVE TO LEAVE.  
Karkat: THAT’S LIKE NEGATIVE PROGRESS BUT WHATEVER. IF IT HAPPENS IT HAPPENS.  
Karkat: ITS JUST SOMETHING I’LL STRESS OVER FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS.  
Dave: is there anything i can do to help?  
Karkat: I DON’T THINK SO, NOT UNLESS YOU DEVELOP A CURE FOR LYCANTHROPY BEFORE THE NEXT FULL MOON.  
Dave: im sorry  
Dave: i wish there was something i could do to help you out somehow. i know full moons must suck hardcore ass  
Karkat: YEAH, BUT THEY’RE NOT AS BAD AS THEY USED TO BE. I’M USED TO THE ROUTEINE NOW. I KNOW THAT IF I FOLLOW THE STEPS I CREATED THAT EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY.  
Karkat: THAT DOESN’T MEAN THEY DON’T FUCKING SUCK THOUGH.  
Dave: yeah they totally all around just fucking suck ass  
Dave: full moons are the champion ass-suckers  
Dave: theyre probably why i have no ass- they sucked it  
Karkat: DAVE!  
vDave: what  
Karkat: OH MY FUCKING GOD I AM LAUGHING SO HARD RIGHT NOW.

Dave couldn’t help but grin at the idea of Karkat laughing. The feel of the smile chased away the last of his lingering nerves from this morning and the tension left his shoulders. He couldn’t help but egg Karkat on.

Dave: why did you think i was assless if the moon didnt suck it all away like the greedy moon goblin it is, constantly hungering for only the most succulent of asses. whyd you think baring ass was called mooning people karkat?  
Dave: the moon fuckin nerfed me so that my ass wouldnt cause traffic accidents as i walked by, cheeks clapping  
Karkat: KJGHJGKJGKJHGHGJLGGKJKFG.  
Karkat: I THINK I LITERALLY FEEL A TEAR OH MY GOD I HAVEN'T LAUGHED THIS HARD IN MONTHS.  
Karkat: DAVE AS HARD AS I AM LAUGHING RIGHT NOW I HAVE TO SAY THAT YOU DO ACTUALLY HAVE AN ASS YOU KNOW.  
Dave: are you admitting that youve checked out my ass?  
Karkat: I…  
Karkat: LISTEN.

Now it was Dave’s turn to laugh. Maybe it wasn’t that loud or long, but it rang true. 

Dave: omfg  
Dave: youve checked out my ass  
Dave: did you like it?

Karkat: I AM NOT ANSWERING THAT!  
Dave: bwahahahaha  
Dave: dude chill its totally ok i know my ass is just irresistible like that  
Karkat: NO THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEAN AT ALL!  
Dave: why are you blushing or something?  
Karkat: NO!!!!!!  
Dave: oh  
Dave: my  
Dave: fuckin  
Dave: god  
Dave: do i have a good ass at least? is it worthy of being checked out?  
Karkat: STOP THAT! I AM /NOT/ THINKING ABOUT YOUR ASS!  
Dave: okay ok ill stop but only because you asked me to  
Karkat: THANK YOU.  
Karkat: GOD I’M STILL FUCKING GIGGLING OVER HERE.  
Karkat: I BLAME YOU.  
Dave: that’s ok I know im hilarious  
Karkat: SHIT. THE BELL’S RINGING.  
Karkat: I’VE GOT TO GO. TALK TO YOU LATER?

The hopeful question made Dave grin again. 

Dave: always  
Dave: have a good day at school karkat  
Karkat: THANKS.  
Dave: no  
Dave: thank you

Dave snapped his phone closed before Karkat could reply, and at last he felt like today might not be that bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the first part doesn't make you scream and the last part make you cry with laughter I have failed. I might hit you with the hard stuff but at least I finish up with something wholesome and funny as Dave and Karkat continue to grow closer together even as more problems arise.
> 
> Also, this is the first time I've acknowledged the fact that Dirk is hella dead. This will be addressed in more detail later. 
> 
> Dave's reaction to the second round of photo picking and the news reel is a very honest one. Plus the moment between him and Slick is so pure. Stabdad for the freaking win. 
> 
> There's a lot going on in this chapter even if it's half pesterlog, but its an important milestone in the creation of the world I'm building. Let them carve out a hole of safety for now. Let them keep the world away, even if its not for forever. 
> 
> Thoughts?


	12. chapter twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heck yeah new chapter!

In a weird way it was like nothing had happened. News about the new serial killer broke softly in the Midwest. That was a Texas thing; it didn’t affect them, so far away from the people that Bro had hurt that the distance lulled Dave into a false sense of security until he caught an earful of students talking about it at school in excited voices and his hands flushed cold from bloodloss from how tightly he’d clenched his fists. 

Karkat, damn him, noticed. “You okay?” He asked, concerned. 

Dave pulled his attention away from the gaggle of jocks and cheerleaders whispering to themselves and speculating like they somehow knew enough about Bro to guess what the cops hadn’t with their dumb theories. “I’m fine,” he said, shooting a fake grin at Karkat.

Karkat didn’t look convinced, but he hadn’t noticed what the other students were talking about yet and Dave had to tread the thin line of keeping Karkat in the dark. It would be too easy to just stare at him, nervous but trusting until Karkat put the pieces together on his own. He was a smart kid, he could do it easily, so Dave had to be very careful as he schooled his expression into nonchalance.

Karkat was still staring at him like he sensed the act for what it was, and who knows he probably could hear Dave’s raised heartbeat or some shit with his superwolf hearing. But instead of pressing the subject, he switched topics. “What are you going to do when school ends?” He asked. “You can’t just stay locked up at your mystery safe house all goddamn day.”

“That’s still months away,” Dave shrugged. “A lot of things can change in that amount of time. Who knows?” He joked. “I might be free by then.” He wasn’t sure how to react to the idea of freedom. It was such a foreign concept to him. 

“Free how?” Karkat asked, and Dave fed him the smallest bit of truth.

“If the cops finally catch who’s after me I’ll be free to testify without fear of retribution,” he explained, lacing his fingers together behind his back with a quick grin. “I’ll be free.” Free of what though? Slick’s overbearing paternal presence? The bore of the safe house? He wasn’t sure if he wanted that yet. He wasn’t sure how to live life without a collar around his throat and the ankle bracelet at his foot chaffed at him. 

“Is that what you want?” Karkat asked as overhead the bell rang. “To be free?”

Suddenly Dave wasn’t sure what he wanted, so he turned the question around. “Wouldn’t you?” Dave asked.

Karkat scowled. “I’ll never be free,” he answered. “Not even if they catch the wolf who Turned me. The damage has been done.”

In a way Dave understood. “You’ll be free from fear though,” Dave told him. “Free of wondering when he’ll reappear to try and kill you.”

“People will always try to kill me,” Karkat answered wryly as he slammed his locker closed. “I won’t ever be free of that.” He turned to go find his classroom down the hall, but Dave stopped him with a word.

“Me either,” he said, gulping. 

Karkat gave him a long, hard look, his red gaze full of unasked questions before he sighed and went to class.

Dave drug his feet to his own classroom, lost in his thoughts as he imagined a life free from Bro Strider. The constant, crippling fear that he kept permanently shoved into the back of his mind might go away once Bro was either dead or behind bars, but would that be enough to keep him safe? Would Bro have used his connections to other sketchy killers on the darkweb to ensure Dave’s demise if he went down, hired an assassin or some kind of professional hitman? That seemed likely, but what was more likely was the thought that once this story eventually broke and became public, the families of all Bro’s victims would know his name. They’d know his face. They’d know he hadn’t saved their loved ones, worse, he was fucking complacent to countless murders. Would they target him for a little illegal justice? Place the blame where blame was righty due?

Dave stared off into the middle distance as his English teacher began her lecture. Would he ever get to live a normal life?

The teacher droned on about something in Latin that he didn’t give a shit about as he doodled down the edge of his notebook, drawing hard, angled lines that somehow consolidated into Karkat’s face. He erased the picture with a frown, fingers shaking. 

There was a question here that he probably had to actually face soon, because he understood that he liked Karkat and wanted more from him than simple friendship but was unsure and unwilling to try for anything more than what he already had. For multiple reasons. Even if Karkat had admitted to checking him out. That wasn’t some kind of declaration of feelings, was it? 

Dave had to know.

But.

No, it was too risky. He gnawed at his bottom lip, tapping his pen against the desk top just to be loud enough to give himself a beat to focus on. His hands missed his turntables. He missed making music, the tremor that constantly ran through his blood funneled into something useful for once. He didn’t even know how to be in a real relationship. All of his knowledge came from shitty porn and he knew that Karkat expected better than that. He was such a romantic, his nose always buried in one of his chick flic books about true love and soul mates and all that tropy shit. Dave would do nothing but disappoint him. Didn’t relationships require honesty first and foremost?

Dave stopped tapping his pen. Here was the crux of the matter. Dave both longed to tell Karkat everything and was terrified of it at the same time. What if, worse, they started a relationship only for Karkat to find out later and hate him for the truth of what he’d done?

But that was okay because Dave wouldn’t make a move on Karkat until his friend knew the truth about him. He was content to wait for as long as he needed to. There would be none of that leading on bullshit he’d seen in movies and such. Karkat would either have all of him or none of him. That’s what they both deserved. 

But looking down at his blank paper Dave could see the faint outline of where he’d erased Karkat’s face and his heart ached with want that was easy to ignore. He was used to ignoring the things he wanted most. Bro had made sure of that. 

Dave looked up at the clock on the wall as he listened to the teacher lecture on, counting down the minutes till the lunch bell rang. When it’s droning buzz rang out over the classroom and the flood of eager students jumped up at its sound, Dave hung back for a moment, letting the crowd clear out. 

Right before he could leave, the teacher called out to him. “Jackson,” she asked. “Could you stay behind for a moment? I need a word with you.”

It took Dave a second to realize she meant him. He’d become so detached from his fake name that he scarcely heard it anymore. He shrugged and made his way to the front of the room. 

The teacher stared kindly at him. “How are you doing?” she asked. “You seem distracted today, like there’s a lot on your mind.”

“There’s always a lot on my mind,” Dave answered automatically. “And it’s just Dave, not Jackson.” 

“That as it may be,” she replied. “I’d like a minute to talk to you about your grade.”

Dave resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Naw,” He said. “It sucks, I know, I’ll fix it. There, talk over.”

“Not quite,” she restrained him in place with a small smile that pinned him motionless with its shocking sincerity. “Considering… recent events, I thought it would be fair to offer some extra credit.”

“Recent events?” Dave questioned, his blood pressure rising. His temper flared. “I don’t want your fucking pity, and I won’t accept charity.”

Her face didn’t change at the profanity. “It’s not charity if you earn it,” she told him, sitting up straighter. “One essay detailing what you think bravery is. It’s due by the end of the semester and worth twice your midterm.”

“Fine,” Dave agreed just to get out of this room. Every second he stayed here was time with Karkat wasted. “It’ll turn it in, are you happy now?”

“Have a nice lunch,” She said, leaning back. “You’re dismissed.”

Dave all but bolted for the door to stop himself from cussing at her. Dismissed his ass. No one dismissed him. 

“And remember,” She called out to him. “It’s due by the end of the semester!”

Dave didn’t reply, slamming the door behind him. The last thing he needed was more fucking schoolwork, especially when he didn’t really need it. His plan to win straight Bs was going perfectly. He didn’t fucking need extra credit. It wasn’t like he was failing, and so what if he was? This poorly disguised free pity handout could go fuck itself. 

Dave made his way to the front office. “Sorry I’m late,” He dipped his chin at Officer Johnson, same as always. “I got caught up in some bullshit.”

Karkat visibly perked up at the sight of him even as he spoke with a wry grin. “Oh no,” he joked. “You and bullshit? Insensible!” 

“Improbable,” Dave shot back, smiling. 

“Impossible,” Officer Johnson said, sighing. “What did you get into this time?”

“Nothing,” Dave defended himself, sliding into his chosen seat beside Karkat. “I’m innocent until proven guilty.”

“About that,” Johnson mentioned. “I’ve been a cop for a long time. You pick up on things when you’re on the job for long enough. Guilty people all have this look to them. Shifty. Defiant. Unwilling to cooperate. You know, exactly like how you act.”

“So?” Dave said, maintaining his look of indifference. 

“So the innocent also have a look about them,” Johnson told him. “Angry. Confused. Like they don’t quite know what’s going on.”

“And which one do you think I am?” Dave asked, seeing exactly where this was heading. 

“You’re hard to pin down,” the cop said, staring down his nose at Dave. “I’ve seen both faces from you. One’s an act, I know, but in a panic people often inadvertently show their true faces.”

“He’s innocent then,” Karkat spoke up, casual, like he didn’t think this was anything but a game. 

“Why do you say that?” Dave asked, because being shifty, defiant, and unwilling to cooperate was basically his motto in life at this point. 

“Because I’ve never met anyone as lost as you are,” Karkat said, his eyes intent. “Because for someone so fucking smart I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have a clue who they were until I met you. You’re angry, you’re confused, but you keep rolling with it like that’ll make things turn out okay in the end.”

It was rare that someone struck him speechless, but Karkat was doing that more and more. Karkat knew exactly the right thing to say but he always said it in the exact wrong way. Dave swallowed thickly and forced himself to speak. “A long time ago,” he said. “Someone told me exactly who I was and who I would turn out to be.”

“Were they wrong?” Karkat asked gently. 

Dave shrugged. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Because I believed them.”

Karkat looked deeply concerned, and Johnson too, but Dave’s ears were full of Bro’s voice. His hands were cold. 

“Dave,” Officer Johnson tried. 

“Don’t even,” Dave answered him without moving. His lunch sat forgotten in his lap. “I know exactly what I can get away with saying and when to keep my fucking mouth shut, so don’t even try.”

Karkat was still staring at him. His eyes looked wounded.

“And you don’t know anything,” Dave told the cop, knowing he was being cruel again but unable to help himself. “You don’t know shit about me or about what happened.”

“Dave,” Officer Johnson said sternly. 

Dave ignored him as anger flashed through him “What?” He taunted. “You’re going to purposefully force me to remember the bad shit you know I went through and then get upset when I react to it?” He showed his teeth in a disdainful, cold grin. “You should only dish out what you can fucking take, then, and you still don’t know _shit_ about me.”

“He’s right, you know,” Karkat told Johnson, taking Dave’s side. “Don’t jab a dog and then get confused as to why it bites.”

Dave felt gratitude for Karkat right before Johnson opened his damn mouth again. 

“Dave,” the cop said. “Why are you so afraid of being known?”

Dave opened his mouth closed it, then opened it again only to scowl and stand up. Rather than answer he simply walked out of the front office. The art room wasn’t locked during lunch so he took shelter in there with a bunch of the art nerds who didn’t nothing but glance nervously at him and go back to their conversation. Perfect. Karkat would never think to look for him in here. 

An instant later his phone buzzed. He didn’t even check the caller ID to know who it was. 

Karkat: I’D COME AFTER YOU IF I DIDN’T THINK YOU NEEDED SPACE.  
Dave: fuck off i dont need space i just need assholes not to go poking at me like im some sort of freak science experiment  
Dave: it is not johnsons job to psychoanalyze my every move i get enough of that shit from slick  
Dave: and the cop can fuck right off too im not ever telling him shit hes probably hand in hand with the feds where it comes to keeping an eye on me in school  
Karkat: DO YOU REALLY WANT ME TO FUCK OFF?  
Dave: no  
Dave: not really im just angry  
Karkat: WHY ARE YOU ANGRY?  
Dave: i dont know i just have a lot to be angry about i guess its like im perpetually going through the seven stages of grief but angers the one i get stuck on an i cant move past it  
Dave: and everyone expects me to be this cool and collected guy, even me, but thats just not right all of the time  
Dave: and im allowed to get angry, right?  
Karkat: SO YOU’RE GRIEVING?  
Dave: how  
Dave: how the hell did you get grieving out of that like what the fuck?  
Karkat: YOU JUST SAID YOU WERE STUCK IN A CYCLE OF GREIF.  
Karkat: WHAT DID YOU LOSE?  
Dave: i…

Dave thought about everything he’d lost, all that he couldn’t say, his entire childhood, his innocence, Dirk even, and went with the safe answer.

Dave: i lost my whole life  
Dave: everything ive ever known is gone now and its not that i want it back because fuck that but  
Dave: but  
Dave: i just wish things were different  
Karkat: DO YOU REGRET THAT YOU DID, WHATEVER IT WAS?  
Dave: no  
Dave: as irrational as it is i just want to not have to deal with the consequences because i might be a selfish bastard but at least i know what i want. cant we just skip to the happy ending or something? im drowning in the middle and i just want this to be over  
Karkat: ARE YOU SURE THE ENDING WILL BE A HAPPY ONE THOUGH? WHAT IF THIS IS ALL YOU GET?  
Dave: god thats depressing  
Dave: at least its easy for me to know whatll happen. ill either end up dead or victorious theres not really a middle ground when it comes to me

Maybe that was a bit too much, too on the nose. Karkat of course immediately called him out on it. 

Karkat: DAVE.  
Dave: what  
Karkat: DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT I’M AFRAID OF MOST NOW THAT I KNOW YOU?

To head off the coming train wreck Dave tried to deliberately misunderstand his question. 

Dave: what? youre afraid of me?  
Karkat: NO, NOT OF YOU.  
Karkat: OF WAKING UP ONE DAY TO FIND THAT YOU’RE GONE. VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE, YOUR AGENT SLICK HAVING TAKEN YOU AWAY TO SOME OTHER ASSHOLE-FILLED SMALL TOWN WHERE NO ONE KNOWS YOUR NAME OR FACE OR STORY TO KEEP HIDING OUT FROM THE VILLAINS IN YOUR LIFE.  
Karkat: I’M AFRAID THAT ONE DAY YOUR DEMONS WILL CATCH UP TO YOU, AND WORSE, I’LL HAVE TO WAKE UP ONE DAY TO THE NEWS THAT YOU’RE DEAD.

Damn. Perspective is a bitch. Hearing his own fears reversed just made it worse, but then somehow Karkat drove the nail home in Dave’s heart with his next words. 

Karkat: YOU WERE THERE FOR ME WHEN MY DEMON CAUGHT UP TO ME. YOU SAVED MY LIFE. WILL YOU BE ABLE TO SAVE YOUR OWN? I DON’T WANT TO NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN. I DON’T WANT TO LOSE YOU, DAVE. YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND. 

And Dave didn’t know what to say so instead he fucked up the moment they were having partly out of fear and partly out of a sense of duty. Gotta keep it friendly between them. No romance allowed. 

Dave: im your only friend  
Karkat: CAN YOU SHUT UP FOR A SECOND! GOD ITS LIKE TALKING TO A BRICK WALL WITH YOU! I AM TRYING TO EXPRESS SOME FEELINGS HERE.  
Dave: oh shit sorry  
Karkat: FINE.  
Karkat: I JUST WANT YOU TO BE FREE OF THIS, WHATEVER THIS THING THAT’S HAUNTING YOU IS. FUCK THE TRIAL. FUCK THE COPS. FUCK JUSTICE EVEN IF THATS WHAT IT TAKES FOR YOU TO BE FREE OF THIS KIND OF SUFFERING I HAVE TO SEE YOU GO THROUGH.  
Dave: hey  
Dave: hey dont worry about that—even if i wake up one day to slick shaking me away saying that weve got to go and gotta go right the fuck now its not like i dont have your phone number memorized. id still text you all day every day no matter what  
Dave: and even if i have to leave it wont be for forever one day this will be over and i will be free, goddammit! do you really think id just up and leave without a word?  
Karkat: MAYBE.  
Dave: never  
Karkat: THAT DOES MAKE ME FEEL BETTER ACTUALLY. KNOWING THAT YOU’LL STILL BE HERE FOR ME.  
Karkat: I KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO GO THROUGH THIS ALONE BUT NOW I HAVE YOU AND I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO BEING ALONE AGAIN. THAT WOULD BE TOO CRUEL.  
Dave: im here for you dude  
Dave: always

Dave stopped himself before he could say anything that would give away his true feelings. They were friends for now. Everything else could come later. 

Karkat: DAVE?  
Karkat: WHERE IS YOUR FAMILY?

The sudden change of context threw Dave for a loop. 

Dave: what do you mean?  
Karkat: YOU KNOW, LIKE IN MOVIES AND SUCH THEY’RE ALWAYS HIDING WIT SEC PEOPLE IN GROUPS TO KEEP THE FAMILY TOGETHER. YOU’RE SIXTEEN DAVE, AND YOU’RE COMPLETELY ALONE HERE ASIDE FROM AGENT SLICK. SO… WHERE’S YOUR FAMILY AT? I KNOW THEY DIDN’T HIDE THEM SOMEWHERE ELSE AND IT MAKES NO SENSE THAT WIT SEC WOULD FORCE YOU TO LEAVE THEM BEHIND, SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?  
Karkat: I’M SORRY FOR ASKING QUESTIONS LIKE THIS BUT I CAN’T MAKE THE PIECES FIT TOGETHER AND THIS ONE PROBLEM HAS BEEN DRIVING ME SHITHIVE MAGGOTS. LIKE, I KNOW THAT I COULDN’T DO THIS WITHOUT MY DAD. THE IDEA OF YOU BEING ALONE AND DEALING WITH WHATEVER YOU’RE DEALING WITH DRIVES ME CRAZY.

Dave blinked hard at the screen, wondering how much it was safe to say. It was a difficult question to consider. Bro sure as shit wasn’t his family—that fucker didn’t count as his dad or whatever the hell he was even if technically Dave shared half his DNA. But Dirk, his brother…

Dave’s fingers were shaking again as he typed out the words. 

Dave: i dont have a family. used to once, but not anymore  
Karkat: WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?

Dave took a deep breath. He could remember every smallest detail of his brother’s face and the pain that ripped through him was just as strong as it had been three years ago when he realized Dirk wasn’t ever coming back. 

Dave: jesus christ karkat i cant tell you that

The bell was ringing overhead but Dave ignored it for as long as possible as he schooled his face into neutral nonchalance and disinterest as the art students began to file into their classroom as Dave forced his way through the crowd out of it only to nearly run into Karkat, who was waiting for him right outside the door.

“How’d you find me?”

“Your scent,” Karkat deadpanned, his thumbs hooked under the straps of his backpack. He jerked his chin to the hallway. “Walk with me?”

Dave fell into step beside him. “Do you often do that?” He asked. “Track people by nose?”

Karkat shook his head. “It’s easier when it’s you,” he said, then immediately began to backtrack, blushing. “I mean, uh,” his voice got so quiet that Dave could barely hear him. “I like your smell. It’s… distinctive. Unique. It makes it easier to find you.”

“Unique,” Dave repeated, smiling as Karkat blushed harder. “I apparently smell unique. Fine by me, I’ll fucking take it. Bet it beats reeking like a garbage fire like I imagine every other teenage cluster of hormonal mishaps that inhabits this school.”

That had Karkat grinning, his nose wrinkled. “Yeah,” he said. “It can get pretty bad sometimes.”

“I can imagine,” Dave said, walking side-by-side with his friend. “People stink. This is a known fact.”

Karkat stopped beside his classroom. The hallways were nearly empty by this point and the late bell was about the ring. “Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” Karkat said. “About your family. About asking questions… about everything.”

Dave kept his face blank as he nodded. “It’s okay,” he said emotionlessly.

“No, it’s not!” Karkat said his voice loud again. “It’s not okay and I can tell because I look at you, at your face, and I know you’re feeling things that you’re not letting yourself show! Why? Why hold everything in?”

Dave blinked, his mouth dry. “I do hold everything in,” He said. “This,” He motioned to his own head, seeding in a little truth. “It’s a mess up here. A tightly wound mess that I’m not ready to have unravel right now. Karkat, _I can’t._”

Instead of pushing for answers, Karkat simply nodded. “I understand.”

“Besides,” Dave said, grateful, forcing a grin. “My shit isn’t the easy kind. It’s more like a bomb. Once it goes off, more people than just me will get hurt and I don’t want that to happen.”

Karkat nodded again. “I’ll see you in history,” he said. “I’ll talk more later, okay?”

“Okay,” Dave agreed, and then he watched as Karkat slipped through his classroom door and out of sight. 

Dave made his way to his own class in a fog. He was noticing more and more how the time he didn’t spend with Karkat didn’t matter as much to him as it should have. Time passed too slowly for his liking as the day dragged on, but eventually it was time for history with all its boring lessons and blatant memorization. Sitting next to Karkat was honestly the only thing about it that was bearable. 

Karkat was already seated at his desk and Dave was forced to wait all the way through class until the teacher dismissed them their normal fifteen minutes early. But that was okay. Dave was used to waiting. 

This time, Karkat was ready for him. “You ever have so much to say that you can’t decide where to start?” He asked. 

Sensing blood in the water, Dave nodded cautiously. 

“My dad says to be blunt but mild, but I say fuck that.” Karkat stared right at him, his gaze earnest. “I’ve always been honest and unwilling to take other’s shit and I’ll let them know it too, but I can be tactful too, and alert enough to know when to tread lightly.”

“What are you leading up to?” Dave asked, wary. 

“It can be so hard to talk to you,” Karkat told him, grimacing. “But at the same time I’d like nothing better. I know you can’t be completely outright with me and I don’t hold that against you, so I need to know something. And this time you have to be honest with me. It’s very important.”

“What’s the question?” Dave deadpanned, already dreading the answer. 

“I need someone to help me out with something,” Karkat said, gesturing vaguely. “Someone I can trust completely. About lycanthropy things.”

“You do realize you can trust me right?” Dave said, relieved at the unexpected turn of the conversation as his shoulders relaxed. “Like I vividly remember me saving your life from lycanthropy things. Recently even, I might add.” He pretended to shudder. “I think I’m traumatized.”

Somehow that was the wrong thing to say. Karkat’s entire posture slumped.

Quickly, Dave interjected. “That was a joke.”

“Was it?” Karkat asked quietly. He wouldn’t meet Dave’s eyes. “I don’t know. I’m asking for a lot and I don’t want to add more to your pile of shit to deal with.”

The amount of genuine care in Karkat’s voice made Dave want to instantly agree to anything he asked. Man, he was in deep. “Hey,” Dave said, equally soft. “Don’t worry about my shit. What is it? You can at least tell me that, right?”

Karkat let out a sigh that shook his whole body, bone weary with the weight of whatever was on his shoulders. “My dad can’t get out of his board meeting,” He said, his knuckles white against the top of his desk. “And I can’t stop the full moon from rising.” 

Dave easily put two and two together. “Shit.”

“Shit is right,” Karkat said, going on. “But I can’t be alone for it, and god I already hate this so fucking much, I’m a terrible person for even asking, but I don’t have anyone else and I don’t want to have to go back to the hospital for it, so…” He trailed off, losing words, full of not knowing what else to say. 

It didn’t matter. Dave understood. 

“You’re asking me to be there?” He said softly, stunned. 

“Not if you don’t want to!” Karkat quickly said, panicking. “And not like that or anything, and clearly not in the same room because duh, but I need someone else in the house to lock all the doors and arm the security system and make sure I don’t seize to death on the floor or something.”

“Wait,” Dave said, his mind skipping to the part that jumped out at him. “Seize to death?”

“Yeah,” Karkat admitted, his face dark. “It’s not like its fucking fun to Turn.” He kept it at that and didn’t say anything else. 

Dave let out a low whistle. “Damn.”

“Damn,” Karkat agreed, shrugging helplessly. “I wouldn’t ask you except that you’re kind of exactly right about the saving my life thing.” His voice got smaller. “And the, you know, lycanthropy thing. I figured if you’d already seen me at my worst everything else can’t be as bad as that, right?”

“What will I have to do?” Dave asked, curious despite the seriousness of the situation. 

“Basically make sure I don’t fucking die,” Karkat said. “The system is mostly fool-proof and there’s no chance of escape or anything like that. You wouldn’t be in any danger.”

“Okay,” Dave said. 

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Karkat went on, his voice getting faster. “Especially from you, but I can’t think of anyone else that I’d even consider trusting like this. And,”

“Okay,” Dave said again.

“And it sucks, I’m a freak, and I’m afraid you’ll hate me for this.” Karkat finished his speech with a huff of air, sucking in his breath as he waited for a reply. 

“Karkat,” Dave said seriously. “I already said okay.” 

Karkat opened his mouth, ready to argue, but then deflated with surprise. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Dave answered. “I’ll do it. Slick himself couldn’t drag me out.”

“Oh Jesus,” Karkat said, already panicking. “Agent Slick. I didn’t even think about him.”

“Don’t worry,” Dave said, sensing the buildup of instant stress in Karkat. “I’m sure he’ll be okay with this.”

“Why?” Karkat sounded confused. 

“He had a soft spot for you,” Dave told him, grinning. “What? Like you couldn’t tell.”

“Fuck off,” Karkat snapped, the reply automatic before he realized he wasn’t being mocked. “Sorry. Habit.”

“It’s okay,” Dave said. “Damn. That’s it. I’ve reached my daily limit of spoken ‘okays’. Can’t say that word anymore now without inflation ruining my adjective economy.”

Karkat smiled, and his face was deeply relieved as the bell rang and school ended. “Can’t have that,” He joked. “Whatever would you do with a word missing from your vocabulary?”

“Make shit up,” Dave confided. “I attest to the age-old trend of just making shit up whenever normal words fail you. Shakespeare had it right all along, the pretentious bastard.”

That won another smile from Karkat, who was looking not so worn down, like a weight had been lifted from him.

“How long have you been worrying about this?” Dave asked with a flash of insight.

“Weeks,” Karkat admitted, breathing deeply as Dave stood up and offered him a helping hand. “Thanks,” he said as Dave helped pull him to his feet.

Karkat’s palm was warm and the brief contact sent a shock through him, a lovely thrill that Dave didn’t want to end. “I’ll text you later.”

“You’d better,” Karkat replied, stretching in a way that made Dave want to stare. 

“I will,” Dave promised, and together they left the classroom and headed to the waiting bus, another day of school behind them and another tomorrow looming huge on the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kinda a slow one, but with important build up for the rest of the story.
> 
> This is slow burn at its slowest as Dave ponders the idea of freedom's uncertainties and a relationship with Karkat all while struggling with himself over everything that's happening to him and the idea of his own innocence and what little right he thinks he has to such a thing . He's lost and angry and he knows this. But, the danger is very real and he knows that too.
> 
> This poor boy and everything he's lost that he never got the chance to grieve i cri 
> 
> Then Karkat's bombshell favor drops (i'm sure no one saw that one coming lol) to set up a literally bomb ass next chapter so... ; )


	13. chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you feel the anticipation building? It's finally here-- the new chapter!
> 
> Enjoy!

It’s funny how time worked. Sometimes it rushed forward or dragged on in irregular sprints and lulls that fell like waves crashing on the beach, each one erasing more and more of the sand beneath Dave’s feet until he was teetering on an edge, fighting to keep his balance. Struggling to stay afloat. Unsure of which way to fall. 

Those two weeks leading up to the full moon were straight from hell in the best possible way as somehow, Dave and Karkat grew closer together in afternoons spend at the board office, heads close together as Dave carefully explained advanced algebra to Karkat and the latter explained how the hell to write a decent English paper. They talked about movies and books and stars, hopes and dreams and fears, but never about themselves. Dave’s past was a closed book bound tightly in chains and neither of them picked at the loose pages that sometimes fluttered out whenever Dave heard an unexpected loud clash of noise or stared too long at the news. For the first time since Dave had escaped the apartment, Bro seemed like a distant problem. Like, sure, Bro was an issue looming overhead like a thundercloud, but now Dave lived in the calm before the storm and as deceptive as that was, he’d found peace here. 

And then those two weeks were up. Every night Dave stared out the kitchen window to watch the moon rise and every night the moon waxed larger until its almost-full face shone down on him in silver. It was then on that final night that the dread began to set in. 

Initially Agent Slick had put up a fight about the whole affair, bitching and moaning about safety protocols and recklessness and ‘Dave this is the opposite of a good decision’, but at the end of it Dave guessed it didn’t matter much what house he was locked in as long as he couldn’t get out and Slick had an eye on him at all times. 

The funny thing about that was Dave never imagined that Slick would eventually break, but somehow the gruff older agent must have guessed how important this was to Dave. That or Slick didn’t want to deal with the fallout when Dave predictably disobeyed him to see Karkat. 

Karkat missed school the day that Dave climbed on a different bus that would take him to Karkat’s house. It was overcast overhead in a way that didn’t happen in the south, the sky somehow damp above him. His backpack was stuffed with a few extra changes of clothes, a toothbrush, and his unfinished schoolwork that despite what he told Slick he wasn’t planning on finishing. 

In the murky wet daylight Karkat’s house always looked grander from the outside, identical to the other rows of houses that lined the cul de sac. It looked like a picture cut out of a magazine showcasing Blue Collar America, and Dave felt like a stain on the paper as he clomped down the bus steps and onto the pavement of Karkat’s driveway. Mr. Vantas’ boxy modified car was still in the driveway and the lights were on inside like he must have just been out to load it up with the luggage Dave could see clustered in the backseat. 

Dave made his way up to the front door with his heart in his throat, staring down at the scuffed shoes that were all he had left of his old life. He’d have to replace them soon, they were too small for him now and the sole was starting to come off at the toe and heel. The thought made him uneasy. 

He rang the doorbell, expecting Mr. Vantas to answer. Instead he got a nervous-looking Karkat. Dave said nothing as he put his hands in his pockets. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Karkat answered back shyly as Dave studied him. His friend was dressed casually in a graphic tee and gray sweats. He looked almost normal if it wasn’t for the shadow in his red eyes. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Dave shrugged off his backpack and held it in his hands. “There’s still time to change your mind,” he said gently, reading Karkat’s strained expression.

Karkat shook his head. “No,” He said. “I… I want you here.”

Dave swallowed past the lump in his throat as Karkat hurriedly went on, letting him in.

“Anything interesting happen at school today?” Karkat asked, filling the silence before a loud thump came from the side room as Mr. Vantas slammed the last briefcase shut with a snap before appearing in the entryway. 

“Hello, Dave,” The man greeted him warmly in a way that didn’t erase the stress lines carved around his eyes. 

“Sup,” he said back, still holding onto his backpack. 

Mr. Vantas let out his breath. “Today’s the big day,” He began, and Karkat instantly groaned. 

“Dad,” Karkat complained. 

Mr. Vantas held up a hand. “Wait,” he said seriously. “I had this whole speech planned out.”

“No,” Karkat protested loudly. “No speech! We’ll be fine.”

“I wrote a list,” Karkat’s dad said triumphantly, reaching into his breast pocket to draw out and unfold a piece of paper. He cleared his throat, smoothing out the paper.

“No list!” Karkat demanded, slightly mortified. His eyes were wide. “NO!”

Mr. Vantas looked hurt, his mouth downturned, and Karkat quickly amended himself.

“We’ll be fine,” Karkat said. “I’ve got this. We’ve got this. Now go to your meeting and have fun in California.”

“Okay, okay,” Mr. Vantas relented at last, his gaze fond. “But call me as soon as you can. And remember, the police have us on speed dial. So does the hospital.” The last part was directed at Dave. “Don’t be afraid to call for help.”

“Fine,” Karkat promised, all but attempting to shove his dad out of the door. “We know, we’ve got this. Now go before you miss your plane.”

Mr. Vantas let out a huff, squaring his shoulders. “Okay,” he said, then sighed. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Leaving you. It’s crazy.”

And suddenly Karkat didn’t look so sure of himself anymore. “I won’t be alone, it’s okay,” Karkat said it like he was trying to convince himself of it, and Dave felt like a watcher intruding on this private family conversation. He was still intrigued with watching them, soaking in how a healthy small family interacted. He stayed silent. 

“Alright,” Mr. Vantas picked up the suitcase and checked his watch. “I’ve got to go. You two kids stay safe.”

“We will,” Karkat promised again, but Dave could easily hear the tremor in his voice. “Now go. Everything will be okay. It’s just another full moon.”

Mr. Vantas held out his open arms and his son obediently embraced him. Like this it was easy to see where Karkat got his fondness and skill with hugs from. 

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Mr. Vantas promised, hefting up his final suitcase under his arm. He gave one last worried look to his son, then exited the house. The gentle click of the door closing behind him echoed, and then they were alone.

Karkat looked at Dave like he didn’t quite know what to say. Dave put his hands in his pockets. 

“There’s plenty of food in the fridge,” Karkat blurted out. “And, uh, you can always like, order out if you’d like. We have Netflix too if you get bored.”

“I don’t get bored,” Dave answered back automatically. Long afternoons spent doing nothing in his apartment had taught him how to entertain himself.

“Are you sure?” Karkat fretted. “It’ll be a long time before I can get back to you once it starts.”

Starts. The full moon. Dave blinked, a hint of his first nerves moving through him. “How long do you have?”

Karkat shrugged “It’ll happen pretty quick once the sun starts to go down.”

That was like three hours away. So little time. “Why’d you miss school today then?”

Karkat explained. “I always skip the day of to rest and prepare myself.” He sounded fairly calm for someone who was about to go through hell, but Dave knew this wouldn’t be for the first time. 

“Okay,” Dave said, setting his backpack down by the couch as they entered the living room. “So, what’s the rundown? What do I have to do?”

Karkat looked nervous, then sighed, settling down on the sofa. “I suppose it’s time to give you the full explanation,” he admitted. 

Dave sat down at the other end of the couch, a careful distance between them. The sofa was so plush that it tried its best to eat him for a few seconds before he got situated. “Goddamn,” he said, still sinking into the cushions. “Karkat, help. Your couch is trying to do me in.”

Karkat grinned, the joke doing exactly what Dave had intended. “Yeah, it does that.”

“Damn,” Dave said. “I’ll be sleeping well tonight. This is by far the best couch I’ve ever sat on.”

Karkat made a face at that. “We have a guest room for you,” he mentioned. “You won’t be forced to stay on the couch.”

Dave wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Guest rooms weren’t even supposed to be real things that people had. “We’re drifting off track,” he said to change the subject. “What’s going to happen to you tonight?”

Karkat shrugged. “I’ll Turn,” he said. “Your job will be easy compared to that.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Lock me in,” Karkat answered. “Then let me out again when it’s over.” He unrumpled a slip of paper with a frown. “Dad slipped me this when he hugged me, the absolute bastard.” He curiously read the first few lines, then grimaced. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a good thing you didn’t see this.”

“Why?” Dave said, leaning closer. 

“He writes like a lunatic, number one,” Karkat complained. “And it’s so goddamn impersonal and scientific. He makes it sound like a recipe almost. ‘Do this for the best result’. It’s sickening.”

“Forget the list then,” Dave told him. “Tell me in your words.”

It was the perfect opportunity for Dave to get a glimpse at what went on in his friend’s head, but instead of answering, Karkat scowled. “No,” he sighed. “He explains it far better than I ever could; I’d end up ranting for the next three hours without actually saying anything useful, so, here.” He thrust the list at Dave. “Read it.”

Dave scanned the list, committing it to memory. It was a very complete and detailed list, outlining each step. “That’s it?” he said, turning the paper over to scan the blank back. “That’s… more problematic than I’d thought.” Now the nerves were back full-swing, twisting like snakes in his belly. 

“I know,” Karkat said. “Being a werewolf fucking sucks. It’s shitty and I’m sorry.”

“Karkat, it’s okay,” Dave said, setting the list to the side. The list didn’t matter—Karkat did. “Don’t worry about anything. I’ve got this.”

“Are you sure?” Karkat asked, his red gaze piercing. 

“I’m sure,” Dave swore. 

“Okay,” Karkat said, and he didn’t say anything else so they ended up sprawled out on the couch together, eating chips and watching dumb videos on Karkat’s phone as outside the overcast sky continued to darken from white to gray. Dave tried not to pay attention to the time but in his head the seconds were winding down. 

Eventually Karkat paused the video they were watching to put his hand to his chest, feeling for his heartbeat. Dave could see sweat beading into existence at his temples. 

“Hey,” Dave said softly.

“I’m fine,” Karkat said it unthinkingly. Then he frowned and Dave could feel the tremor that rocked through him. “Maybe not… I should go soon.”

“The moon’s rising,” Dave guessed. 

“Not yet it’s not,” Karkat sighed. “But I should probably go.”

“Okay,” Dave nodded, his neck stiff. He didn’t know what else to say. What was there to say in a situation like this?

“Come on,” Karkat said, rising to his feet. “I’ll show you what to do.” He made a grab for the remote on the side table and snatched it up, flicking on the TV and scrolling through the settings. “Hit Home to see into the basement. It’s a livestream. The cops have it too so don’t do anything fucking stupid.” He paused and then his voice got softer. “But don’t look until at least eight o’clock, alright? I… I don’t want you to see me until after it’s done.”

“Okay,” Dave agreed, no part of him interested in disobeying that particular request. He didn’t fancy catching Karkat in any kind torment like that. 

“It’s this way.” Karkat switched the TV back to idle and Dave jumped up to follow him into the kitchen and down a short hallway that Dave had never glanced at twice before. Karkat opened a shelved pantry to reveal a hidden blue steel door with an old-fashioned sliding bar lock on it that with ease he heaved open. The door groaned with its weight as he opened it, the metal at least three inches thick. Inside there was a narrow stairway downwards, brightly lit and carpeted. 

“The door’s a neat trick,” Dave offered to fill the silence as they headed down into the basement. 

“It’s just an extra precaution on top of my five hundred other precautions,” Karkat told him, and Dave believed it. With as much care that his friend had put into safeguarding the school Dave could only imagine what all must be protecting his house. 

The basement was almost completely unrecognizable. There were no windows. There was only the one door at the bottom of the stairs that ended in a small ten by ten room that had been sealed off from the rest of the basement by iron bars and acrylic. The basement itself was nothing more than a large cage. The walls were gray concrete. The floor was bare. There was a bed piled high with pillows and blankets shoved into the back corner next to a bare standalone toilet and stainless steel sink. 

The door was reinforced bulletproof glass. The small alcove was barred in by what looked like steel but had been double-wrapped with the acrylic and glass so slick and smooth that Dave couldn’t help but reach out and run his fingers over the cool material.

This time the lock was legit, something three-staged and electronic. Karkat keyed in the correct codes and then expertly unlocked the five rows of manual locks that ranged from bars to chains. 

“It’s electromagnetically sealed,” Karkat told him as the door cracked open with a hiss. “And pneumatically locked as well in case the power goes out and the generator is sabotaged. It has a separate ventilation system, self-contained, plus we’re two stories underground. The bars contain silver thread. The glass is bulletproof and the acrylic unbreakable. Even if I somehow get out of here, the house above is just as well protected. The general public is safe.”

Dave let out a whistle. Karkat seemed proud of how secure he’d made this place, determined to make other people safe from him and prevent a repeat of recent history’s worst wolf attack. Then Dave caught sight of the hole in the wall right before the concrete cut its edges into clean, straight acrylic.

It was a thin pane of glass, a break-in-case-of type deal. Behind the glass was a black handgun. Silver bullets were arranged around it alongside spare magazines. Dave felt sick. He could feel his face pale. 

Karkat grimaced, looking at the gun with distaste. “Ignore that,” he advised. “It’s not even loaded.”

“Another precaution?” Dave forced himself to ask.

“Just in case,” Karkat admitted, ashamed. His eyes were hard and his jaw was set. “There’s no weapons in the house aside from that one.” He looked down. “The entry codes are written down on the list I gave you.”

“I won’t forget,” Dave promised. His heart was pounding as Karkat stepped into the basement with his shoulders ridged. 

“So,” Karkat shrugged helplessly. “I guess I’ll see you later?”

Dave nodded, solemn. “I’ll be here.”

Karkat nodded back, and then he swung the door shut between them. There was no goodbye. Dave heard another hiss as the mechanics of it engaged once more, and then with Karkat’s watchful eyes on him Dave dutifully set to relocking each of the manual locks that he knew were probably superfluous because it wasn’t like wolves had thumbs in the first place, but if these extra locks are what made Karkat feel safe then by all hell was Dave locking them 

He had to fight the urge to look back the entire way back up that staircase. The door at the top was even heavier then it looked, but Dave heaved it open and then closed it behind him with a click, locking Karkat in as he slid the heavy iron bolt into place. He slid the movable cupboard back into place to disguise the door, and then he was alone. 

Dave ghosted through the empty house, rechecking to make sure that the front and back doors were also securely locked. Faithful to his promise, he didn’t touch the TV except to boot it up to YouTube. He spent a few hours catching back up with his favorite artists and channels, every second the loneliness settling deeper into his bones before his stomach growled.

Dave raided the Vantas’ fridge but found nothing microwavable. There weren’t even instant meals in the freezer, only healthy single ingredients. Suddenly all those salads Dave had seen Karkat eat at lunch made sense, and he ended up shredding half a head of lettuce in a bowl, tossing a handful of cheese on top, slathering the whole thing in ranch and calling it a night. 

He retreated back to the couch with his sad bowl of lettuce. He couldn’t stop his mind from wandering to Karkat and the meal he was skipping. Dave picked up the list Mr. Vantas had written, setting his bowl to the side as music blasted from the TV. He hadn’t been alone like this since he’d lived with Bro, and just enough time had passed for the sensation to be unfamiliar. 

He reread the list, taking in the cramped, squiggly handwriting that outlined a series of steps to follow.

1\. Lock all doors, engage all security systems, and do whatever Karkat asks you to do. Lock every lock and make sure all outer doors are locked as well. Let no one in and don’t answer the door for anyone. Remember, the cops are only a phone call away.  
2\. Wait. This can be the hardest part. There’s plenty of food in the fridge for you and Netflix on the TV. The computer in my office is also free to use, but please refrain from purchasing adult films—I **will** know if you ignore this and _will_ contact your handler. 

Dave nearly snorted. Like he would ever actually get caught—he knew just enough about hacking to get away with whatever he wanted to. Plus, Mr. Vantas probably had his credit card information auto-saved on his computer…

Dave shook his head to banish the thought. He was a guest here. He wouldn’t take advantage of Mr. Vantas’ trust like that. 

3\. It will take approximately 60 hours for Karkat to return to human form. During this time he will not eat, sleep, or drink, and when he Turns back he will be incredibly exhausted. Your job is to try and get a good meal in him before he passes out for a few more hours, but don’t expect him to eat much because he tends to be nauseous after a the moon begins to wane.  
4\. Karkat has his cell phone on him—he will call or text you when he is ready to be released. **DO NOT GO INTO THE BASEMENT UNTIL HE SUMMONS YOU!**  
5\. If you need help, me or the police are only a phone call away and we are all skilled and experienced at dealing with this so if you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.  
6\. Don’t panic, breathe, and remember that Karkat has done this many times before. Everything will be okay.

Dave set the list slowly to the side, his thoughts torn. Sixty hours was a long time to wait, especially when every passing second dragged at his consciousness like a rusty nail under his skin. Dave couldn’t help but check the clock on the wall, then at the time stamp displayed at the bottom of the TV screen. It was after eight, but Dave had zero desire to spy on Karkat. But, he did need to at last check that his friend was alive and still breathing. 

He picked up the TV remote and flipped it over to the channel that Karkat had showed him earlier. The basement immediately came into view. Dave’s hand was trembling and he kept his finger on the off button, and as soon as his mind registered movement, just long enough for his brain to categorize the shape he saw as _wolf_, he slammed his finger down and the TV shut off with a click. 

He’d look later. For now Dave let his anxiety take a chill as he confirmed that Karkat was doing as okay as to be expected, which meant four legs and a tail. Honestly he was still wrapping his mind around that aspect. Science had never managed to explain this part of the curse. Lycanthropy was a fickle disease for sure. 

Dave finished his piss poor excuse for a dinner and took his time with washing out the bowl he’d used, the water running hot as he ran his hands under it. Then he went back to the couch with the lights dimmed. He texted Slick to let his handler know he had everything under control, and then went back to browsing YouTube. He’d fallen asleep by the time he’d stumbled down the YouTube rabbit hole and into gritty edited AMPVs of his favorite shows set to emo music. 

Dave didn’t dream. It was more of a nap than actual deep sleep, and he woke up just after two am. The TV had paused itself long ago on an ad for Basketball or some other sports shit he didn’t really care about and the dim, fuzzy lighting illuminated the living room in strange ways. 

Dave blinked behind his shades, squinting into the darkened room before sliding them off and tucking them into the neck of his shirt. his feet were quiet across the floor as he made his way over to the hidden door in the kitchen and hauled the steel door behind the cupboard open. He immediately had to put his shades back on at the glare from the overhead lighting that brightened the staircase. 

He started resolutely downward. He had to see for himself just this once. 

Dave had been expecting to see a wolf in the basement, and there was in fact an animal that looked like a wolf but just wrong enough to set all of his hindbrain instincts to screaming. He’d seen pictures of real wolves before they’d been hunted to extinction, and he tried to reconcile that image with the wolf before him but kept coming back to the same conclusion—this was a wolf, but somehow intrinsically _wrong_. 

He looked at Karkat, really looked at him. The wolf wasn’t hard to see under the bright lights and the wolf certainly wasn’t hiding. As soon as Dave had appeared at the top of the stairs the werewolf had bolted for the door, proving to Dave why the glass and acrylic was there—it was to stop the wolf from getting his teeth around the bars. 

Dave paused on the final step, watching the wolf try to bite its way to freedom to kill him. He saw teeth flashing behind the slavering jaws that snapped at him, heard the ferocious growls and snarls of a beast set for blood, pacing along the doorway on restless feet with hackles raised. The wolf was charcoal gray like it had been woven from shadows, smoke, and ashen bones. Only the eyes were the same—a deep, burning red that nearly glowed. The difference was that these eyes held no awareness in them, no mind behind the face, only an endless bloodlust. 

“Damn,” Dave said, and the wolf pricked up its ears at the sound of his voice. “Karkat, you’re one fugly dude.”

The wolf snarled at him again and went back to pacing the floor and drooling at him in a relentless back-and-forth hunter’s gait. It was not a pretty picture. Knowing that right now Karkat was trapped as this thing was horrible. He couldn’t unsee it. The image was branded across the backs of his eyes with a hot iron. 

Dave turned his back on the wolf, a suprisingly difficult task, and walked upstairs and locked the door behind him, leaving Karkat trapped as that monster down in a cold, sterile basement far underground. There was nothing he could do. Everything in him was unquiet and he didn’t go back to sleep for a long time. 

…

At about 24 hours in Dave thought he’d go crazy. His hours were spent doing nothing but stressing over the fact that Karkat the wolf was locked in the basement. Somehow this fact hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal until after Dave had seen the werewolf with his own eyes. That realization bothered Dave incessantly until he figured out why—standing at the foot of those stairs, watching the wolf pace back and forth before him—Dave had felt like prey. 

He hadn’t felt like that since he’d lived at his old apartment. He thought he’d buried that feeling, but somehow seeing the wolf in the flesh and realizing that the only barrier between them was thin, invisible glass spaced with bars wide enough he could easily have fit his arm through had brought the feeling back in full-force. 

Now Dave was just as trapped in the house as Karkat was. Common sense told him he could easily bow out and call the cops to come over and finish this, but loyalty to his friend kept Dave in place on the sofa. Apparently he had more pride than he thought, because the idea of giving up made a sour taste coat his mouth.

Once an hour he checked on Karkat using the TV live stream. Aside from that he left the wolf alone. He didn’t go downstairs again. He didn’t want to see Karkat in such a state. He much preferred his friend without the fur. 

Dave wandered through the huge house a little, trying not to actively snoop around. He stopped to study the row of lovingly framed school photos on the wall by the entrance. He stared closer when he realized that before seventh grade, Karkat’s eyes showed as a deep, stormy gray that matched his dad’s eyes. 

Unsettled, Dave noticed more differences than that. Most of the before pictures featured other people. A boy with blue eyes and buck teeth. A girl with wild dark hair and a wide, slightly crooked smile. A girl wearing an eyepatch and a scowl stood side by side with Karkat, both of them flipping off the camera, a life shown in snapshots of people Dave didn’t know and never heard Karkat talk about. 

Dave closed his eyes. 33 students. Were they the ones shown in these photos? Dave’s sins might have been awful, but at least he hadn’t known any of Bro’s victims personally. 

Dave stared at the pictures, thankful for his small mercy and heartbroken for Karkat all over again. 

…

48 hours in and things still sucked. Dave had eaten all of the lettuce by this point and resorted to munching the apples he found in the fridge. There was some kind of meat in the freezer but the stove intimidated him so he left it alone. He probably couldn’t even figure out how to turn that fancy thing on, much less cook something with it. 

He was saved by a box of stale Cheerios he found in the back of the cabinet. Sweet, sweet salvation. 

He flipped over to Karkat Live TV just to do his hourly check on the wolf and saw nothing amiss, just the same rabid pacing and bar-biting he’d seen already. He turned the TV off again. He was starting to get worried. Watching Karkat move non-stop, exerting himself like a thing possessed for this long in a row without ceasing… Dave could scarcely imagine a living thing going through this and surviving. A human could only go so long without water or sleep and Karkat was pushing right against the end of the line. The burn out from this wouldn’t be good, Dave knew. 

His own sleep cycle was fucked from stress as he did nothing but nap for a few hours before his own stress would wake him.

It was official-- this sucked.

…  
Nearly at the sixty hour mark Dave started to get desperate. Karkat was due to Turn back any minute now so Dave stopped checking in on him via livestream. With nothing to do besides text increasingly weird and niche memes to Slick just to blow up his phone, Dave resorted to the unthinkable. 

He did his homework. All of it. Even the parts that wouldn’t be due for days. Madness. 

Then Dave did the inexcusable. 

He texted Karkat. 

Dave: so  
Dave: youre a wolf now and obviously cant text me back  
Dave: cool cool  
Dave: im just fucking bored out of my mind up here and also worried sick about you is that normal?  
Dave: like i get that you have this disease or curse or whatnot and maybe im being a dick by saying this but i really wish you didnt have to go through this every month. i know it sucks beyond any realm of conceivable suckage and it triple sucks because none of this was ever your fault yet youre still paying the price for it  
Dave: and thats just not fair  
Dave: but the world isnt fair and i know that more than anyone, but i hate that this happened to you of all people because you are one of the kindest, most good-hearted people ive ever met and no one deserves this less than you do and i get that im rambling now but bear with me  
Dave: you were right. i did hold you and wolf you separate in my mind and now im going through the complicated process of recognizing the mistakes of my own inner self  
Dave: i just wish you were here. yo is it crazy or what that i miss you when youre in the same house as me?  
Dave: anyway i have a lot of stuff i want to talk about but itll only work if youre there to discuss it with me, sort myself out, you know, about all this wolfy shit that ive been low-key ignoring until reality bitch slapped me in the face like it did just now  
Dave: like every month? every fucking month? thats fucking insane  
Dave: god im still here fucking rambling like a utter jackass texting into the void when i know youre not going to text me back any time soon  
Dave: its like seven at night and I can see the moon out the window. i used to think the moon was beautiful but now im not so sure. at least i can be glad that the moon is waxing away now, shrinking back down into something harmless, something that cant hurt you  
Dave: theres this saying you know on the internet maybe, about someone who pulled down the stars for their friend. seeing you like this makes me want to pull down the moon for you and hide it away and by god am i saying too much oh my god why cant i shut up  
Dave: fuck  
Dave: god  
Dave: just do me a favor and forget i just sent you that ok?  
Dave: im going to shut up now

Dave set his phone down before he could write anything else super incriminating and embarrassing. His face felt red. God.

He checked the clock again, feeling his anxiety pick up without a phone to distract him. It was right at the sixty hour mark. Was Karkat Turning back right now? Had too much time passed? Should Dave check on him again? What if something had happened?

Dave leaned back on the sofa, torn as he fiddled with the remote to the TV. He kept his eye on the clock, watching the seconds tick down as he argued with himself. In the end he put the remote to the side. If anything had gone wrong, the police would know and they’d send somebody to help. Dave wouldn’t violate Karkat’s trust just because his gut felt like it was full of red hot snakes. 

Then his phone vibrated form his pocket and Dave nearly dislocated a finger in his haste to fish it out as fast as possible. He opened the text and scanned the words with a quick eye. 

Karkat: DONE  
Karkat: HELP

Dave was already off of the couch and across the living room before he’d finished reading the text. His heart was pounding as he heaved the hidden door open, slid back the bar, and all but ran down the stairs. He nearly tripped once or twice but his superior sense of balance saved him from falling and breaking his face. 

At the bottom the first thing he saw was the complete lack of a wolf pacing the floor, which a part of Dave still expected to see. He was still confused about how the finer mechanisms of how the hell lycanthropy worked but turning into a wolf was fucking crazy. Instead he spotted Karkat, back in human form, lying huddled up beside the spare bed that he’d somehow managed to drag himself over to. He hadn’t made it onto the bed, but had pulled off the blankets to cover himself with. Only his bare legs were visible from under the blankets.

Dave forced his fingers to be still as he worked at opening the manual locks. Then he keyed in the proper code and the electric lock hissed open as the system was disarmed. The first thing Dave noticed was the blast of cold air that hit him in the face, heavy with the fetid scent of something heavy and woodsy. 

“Karkat?” Dave called out tentatively as he approached the bed. “You okay?”

The lump that was Karkat shifted, revealing a tired face. For a second he looked confused, like he couldn’t quite place who he was seeing, then he slowly said, “Dave?”

“Yeah,” Dave said, carefully kneeling beside him. “I’m here.”

Karkat nodded on a stiff neck. He was covered in sweat and still rocking with the leftover tremors of the change. “You’re here,” he said in disbelief. 

“I made you a promise,” Dave told him, meaning it. “Now let me help you. Can you walk?”

From the state of Karkat’s face walking seemed doubtful. “Not yet,” Karkat cautioned. “Give me a few more minutes to regain control of everything.” He shook his head like he was trying to clear a swarm of gnats, his eyes unfocused.

“Hey,” Dave said seriously. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

Karkat huffed weakly and rolled over, trying to sit up. “Duh,” he said. “I know that. Just… give me a moment.”

Dave sat back and watched as Karkat struggled to pull himself together. It was hard to watch and even harder to sit and do nothing. Dave’s heart was pounding. 

“Help me off the floor,” Karkat stuttered, his teeth chattering.

“Sure thing,” Dave said, reaching out to him. Karkat locked his arm across Dave’s shoulder and let himself be tugged up onto the thin mattress above them. The springs groaned with the added weight. The blanket slid and fell off with the motion, revealing Karkat in a pair of loose black sports shorts and nothing else. 

Dave resolved to keep his eyes only on Karkat’s face for the time being, like the good friend he was. Karkat didn’t seem to notice his lack of clothes as he shivered in the cold air, radiating a fevered heat that Dave could feel seeping into his side from the contact. 

Dave didn’t move or speak, letting Karkat have the time to recover at his own pace as he offered a silent support. 

Slowly the tremors that rocked Karkat subsided. His red eyes still looked dead but at least there was a light in them, a speck of awareness completely different from the dull-eyed wolf that Dave had seen earlier. 

“Do you think you can try the stairs?” Dave asked him. 

Karkat shuddered again, leaning heavily into Dave’s side. “You’ll have to help me,” he said. 

“Okay,” Dave decided. “We’ll go slow. Let’s get you out of here.”

Dave pulled Karkat to his feet, the werewolf leaning on him for support with his arm around Dave’s shoulders. Dave had a good grip on Karkat; he wouldn’t let his friend fall.

They wordlessly tracked a slow path across the floor. The door was still hanging open from Dave’s entry and he left it open behind him as they passed through it. There was no need for locks and armed security systems now. The worst of the danger had passed. Dave carefully navigated the stairs, doing most of the work as he climbed upwards. It probably would have been faster if he’d just carried Karkat himself but he never offered the indignity of that idea out loud. 

“Is this how you broke your nose?” Dave asked just to fill the awkward silence, recounting that throwaway line from months ago. “Tripping on the stairs?”

Karkat took his time with answering as if he had to dig backwards through his memories to find the answer. “Yeah,” he coughed out. “I thought I could do it on my own. Dad freaked the fuck out… Got blood everywhere.”

They reached the top of the staircase. The lights were dim, the windows dark, but the kitchen was warmly lit as Dave deposited Karkat into a chair at the table. Mr. Vantas’ instructions had been clear, and Dave was going to follow them. 

“Now,” he said. “Food time.”

Karkat made a face of distaste. In the light Dave could see how heavy the bags under his eyes were, lines of utter exhaustion inked across every inch of skin as he sagged downwards like gravity itself was too much for him. 

He filled a glass with water and handed it over to Karkat, who's lips looked painfully dry. Karkat seized the glass and drained it, ravenous, so dave refilled it for him and kept adding water to it until Karkat must have drank close to a gallon. Good. Maybe that would hydrate him some.

Dave turned to the shiny stove top and very carefully opened the fridge, ever-paranoid about swords and booby traps even though he knew that this wasn’t his apartment. The inside of the fridge looked completely normal, filled with more food than Dave had ever seen in his entire life. Cold air leaked out.

He might not have been a chef but he was pretty sure he could manage to cook some eggs without burning down the house. He took out the cardboard carton, its logo stamped organic and free range, and opened it up to reveal neat rows of brown eggs. He’d never seen brown eggs before. Or any eggs really, but how hard could this cooking thing be?

He picked up an egg. It felt cold and smooth against his palm. “Yo, Karkat,” he asked. “Can I borrow your phone?”

Karkat wordlessly pulled his smartphone from his pocket and handed it over. There wasn’t even a passcode to unlock it. The home screen was set to a picture of him and his dad smiling together.

Dave opened up Google and typed in ‘how to cook eggs’ and was immediately swamped with millions of hits. He tried to refine his search. “How do you like your eggs?” He asked Karkat, who looked like he was attempting to become one with the kitchen table. His head was down, sleep starting to take hold of him. Dave heard a grunt of response but no words.

“You’re getting them scrambled,” Dave told him, settling on what seemed like the easiest option as he navigated past pictures of complicated omelets and deviled eggs to a site called ‘**HOW TO SCRAMBLE EGGS FOR IDIOTS**” and got started.

He found a frying pan, some salt, a tube of cooking spray, and combined them all into the pan. He followed the instructions of the website but they only began at the egg part with no prep beforehand so Dave hoped the pan and spray were correct. There was at least a picture he could follow. 

He spent several seconds tapping the egg against the counter top before achieving zero results so he just smacked that egg down and splattered egg everywhere as it exploded in his hand. Shit. This was harder than it looked. The broken yolk dripped in runny yellow down his fingers, cold and slimy, and he felt a twinge of disgust at the feeling. He wiped up the ruptured egg and cleaned off his hands again before selecting a new victim. 

This time he went slowly, tapping the egg gradually harder against the counter top until a thin web of cracks appeared, which he stuck his thumb through to tear the shell in half. Somehow he still ended up with yolk all over himself but at least there was an egg in the pan now. He repeated the process five times and turned on the burner. Heat flared to life.

“What are you doing?” 

Dave nearly jumped at the unexpected sound of Karkat’s voice. “Prepare to be blown away by my godlike domesticity skills,” he replied without turning around. “I am making you some goddamn eggs.”

He heard a huff of tired laugher, then, “Did you really have to google how to make eggs?”

The phone was still open on the counter, the website plain to see. “Yeah, so?” Dave said. “I thought you were asleep?”

“Not yet,” Karkat said, but he yawned halfway through his words. Dave turned around to see Karkat was at least sitting upright again. He looked like microwaved death but the light was coming back to his eyes so Dave counted that as a win. 

Dave scanned the website, skimming past long paragraphs of what to do next. The entire time the stove grew hotter. A sizzle filled the air.

“You’ve got to mix them first,” Karkat yawned again, looking amused. The water must have revived him a little. His shaggy hair was falling into his eyes as he blinked up at Dave. 

“What?” Dave said, his ears feeling warm at the way Karkat was gazing at him. 

“You’ve got to mix them,” Karkat said again. “Have you ever cooked before?”

“No?” 

“Dumbass,” Karkat laughed again. “They’re burning.”

Dave looked down at the pan and saw that his mass of eggs were turning brown around the edges. The smell was terrible. “Yep, they are,” he agreed, sliding the pan away from the heat and setting it aside. He’d deal with that mess later. “Okay,” he said. “No eggs. That was a bad idea. What else do you want?”

Karkat looked approximately three seconds away from collapsing where he sat. He could barely keep his eyes open. “Nothing,” he said. “I feel sick. I just want to sleep.”

“Your dad told me to make sure you ate something,” Dave explained. “I’ll let you sleep for as long as you want, I promise, but you’ve got to eat something for me first.”

This time Karkat didn’t answer, so Dave went digging in the fridge again. He emerged with some vanilla pudding, half a carrot, and an apple. 

“Bone the apple teeth,” Dave said proudly. “Dig in.”

Karkat blinked on eye open to observe the disaster of a meal. “No.” Stubbornness hardened his tired features. “If I eat I will throw up. You do not want that to happen.”

Dave felt himself bend under the pressure of the promise of conflict in Karkat’s eyes. The last thing he wanted to do was fight, and even further down on his list of shitty things that could happen was attempting to force-feed his friend an apple. Plus vomit was gross and he didn’t want to deal with that. 

“Okay,” Dave gave in. “No food. You win this time, Karkat.”

Karkat swayed in his chair, exhaustion taking over. He might have fallen if Dave hadn’t zipped over to catch him. 

“Woah,” Dave said, concerned. “Easy there. You alright?”

Karkat nodded wordlessly, still leaning into Dave’s side, nearly deadweight. He looked truly terrible after spending the last 60 hours in a state of manic bloodlust with no sleep or food and Dave was watching the inevitable collapse of such an exertion. Karkat was simply done in. Dave wasn’t completely sure he was actually awake at this point. It was hard to tell. 

“Karkat?”

There was a soft grunt of response and Dave felt his heart melt. He gently readjusted his grip on his friend, squaring his shoulders. “Okay,” Dave said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

He seriously doubted that Karkat could navigate another flight of stairs to make it to his room, so the couch was the clear winner here. It was shockingly easy to carry Karkat into the next room. Like this it was easy to see why. Karkat’s bare chest and stocky frame were etched with the outlines of bones, too thin, no fat, nothing but a hardened, wiry musculature beneath the skin that looked out of place on such a body. 

A lump started to form in the back of Dave’s throat. He could see Karkat’s ribs for god’s sake. 

Dave set him on the couch as gently as he could, but Karkat’s red eyes flew open as the plush fabric sank under him. His hand flew up and locked around Dave’s wrist like an iron band. Dave felt the unnatural strength behind it and didn’t try to jerk away. Instead he froze. “Karkat? It’s okay. It’s just me. You’re okay.”

Karkat stared at him with fevered eyes. His grip didn’t change. “Stay,” he pleaded.

For a second Dave didn’t understand. “What?”

“Don’t leave me,” Karkat asked, terrified of something Dave couldn’t name. “Please.”

That please hurt more than anytime Bro had struck him with his fist. It send Dave reeling internally. He didn’t even have to think about his response. “Okay,” he promised. “I won’t.”

Karkat didn’t release him until Dave had sat down at the other end of the sofa, then he settled back down like a weight had been lifted off him as Dave dragged the blanket off the back of the couch to cover him with. The fleecy fabric was soft and fluffy in stripes of dark plaid that he tucked around his exhausted friend. Karkat’s head was slumped down onto his chest, his expression hidden as his breathing slowed. 

Dave stayed seated on the couch. He didn’t dare move away, nor did he want to as he studied the sleeping Karkat. A thousand thoughts bustled around inside his head, replaying the desperate, quiet please and what it meant, terrified of rejection. He looked at his now deceptively peaceful friend who at last looked both relaxed and like he’d been hit by a truck all at once. 

Dave leaned back, at a loss for words as some strong feeling rocked through him, a wave of emotion he didn’t dare name. He stayed like that, watching Karkat sleep, sitting upright on a couch in a dark living room. He eventually took off his shades and set them on the floor, careful not to disturb the sleeping werewolf but at this point Dave doubted anything short of a bullhorn would wake him. 

His own exhaustion began to settle into his bones but he kept his eyes open, watching Karkat breathe as the seconds ticked by.

He must have eventually nodded off at some point, because the sound of a key turning in the front door woke him up in a flash. His eyes bolted open at the soft sound, instantly on high alert even as he realized that something had changed.

He was no longer sitting upright on the couch. Instead he was lying sprawled across Karkat with his head on his friend’s chest. He could hear Karkat’s slow, steady heartbeat in his ear. Karkat was still fast asleep with his head thrown back over the arm of the couch, and both of his arms were around Dave. 

Dave struggled to lift himself upright, panicking as he heard the door open. Karkat’s arms reflexively tightened around him as Dave’s mind surged through a dozen different awful scenarios about who it could be, his fight-or-flight permanently stuck on fight with a helpless Karkat under him before Mr. Vantas came into sight around the hall and Dave forced his fists to relax, his heart pounding with mixed relief and tense anticipation. 

The man didn’t turn on the light but Dave knew the darkness didn’t hide them well enough for the man not to see the position Dave was in. 

He stayed still, not daring to move. 

The quiet, whispered voice startled him. “Everything alright in there?” Mr. Vantas asked, concerned. 

Dave swallowed thickly. “Yeah,” he said, expressionless and emotionless. He refused to feel embarrassed or ashamed, and defiance filled him as Mr. Vantas shuffled closer. 

But Karkat’s dad did nothing except gaze at his son. “Is he okay?”

“Yes,” Dave answered tersely. “Everything went fine.”

The man nodded, his expression gentle. “I’ll leave you two be then. It’s very early. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Dave nodded reflexively, confused as Mr. Vantas left the room and headed upstairs. 

Dave could feel Karkat breathing beneath him and knew that he should move away and never speak of this again, but he felt warm and comfortable and safe in Karkat’s arms, and dammit, if this was all he ever got he could die happy. He looked down at Karkat and felt his heart nearly break. This was everything he wanted—Karkat was everything he wanted, and they’d never been so close before and Dave could trick himself into believing that there was a possibility that maybe Karkat one day would feel the same way. But for now he’d take what he could get and be thankful for it. He laid his head back down on Karkat’s chest and went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long everyone! But it's here! It's done!
> 
> There's so much I could say about this chapter and what went into it that right now, typing this out, I find myself wordless. If you want to scream at me feel free to pop over to the homestuck writer's discord. The link is somewhere on my tumblr (trypticCognizen) and I'm very active on that app and I love to talk to people! Come join us! <3


	14. chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter yay!!!!

Dave was up and off of Karkat long before his friend woke up in the morning. Dave was caught between the rising sun with its threat of being discovered and the warmth of his friend’s embrace. In the end fear won out and Dave made sure to be up and showered long before Karkat managed to drag himself back to the land of the living at around 11 in the afternoon. 

Mr. Vantas didn’t say anything to Dave about the secret cuddle-fest he’d walked into, but there was a knowing glint in his eyes as Dave wordlessly slid into place at the small kitchen table. His freshly washed hair was still wet on top, the shorter sides nearly dry. He could hear Karkat fumbling around in the living room, his steps heavy and uncoordinated as Dave scrolled through the massive backlog of texts from his handler that he’d been purposefully ignoring. If it had been about anything important Dave was sure Slick would have called him. He sent the fed a quick text just to fuck with him, in high spirits now that Karkat was back and he knew everything would be okay.

Dave: i lived bitch

Dave waited for a moment or two for the expected reply. He wasn’t disappointed. 

SS: What the fuck is wrong with you?  
SS: Are you goddamn crazy or something? I have been trying to check up on you for the last forty-five hours! The hell kid???? ‘I lived bitch” the FUCK??????

Dave couldn’t help but grin and he responded, holding back a laugh.

Dave: did you like all the memes i sent you?  
SS: Kid, no I did not appreciate five hundred photos of some godawful face saying something about nasty Tuesdays and slang I don’t even think people your age use. Its shit and your sense of humor is disturbing. Please don’t send me anymore.  
Dave: aw but dont you want to know that im alive and all that jazz? you know communicating through niche memes is actually considered a sign of trust in most internet communities. is that the problem? is there not enough trust between us for shitty memes? should i go back to ignoring you completely?  
SS: Fuck off, Dave.  
Dave: hey  
Dave: guess what  
Dave: [Click here to see the image!]  
SS: I’m not goddamn opening that you little shit! I will be there to pick you up in a half hour—Do NOT keep me fuckin waiting, you ungrateful jerkwad.  
Dave: fine asshole ill keep my memes to myself from now on if you cant truly appreciate their ironic beauty  
SS: Just be ready to go when I get there.  
Dave: understood  
Dave: [Click here to see the image!]  
SS: AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dave put down his phone, grinning from cheek to cheek. Ribbing the fed was fun when it was about shitty memes he’d spent 30 seconds on in Clip Art.

Karkat entered the room, yawning, his hair tousled up. He’d found a shirt somewhere but was still in those same loose shorts from last night. “What are you smiling at?”

Dave waved his phone through the air. “Texting Slick,” he explained. “He does not appreciate the memes I’ve been sending him.”

“What memes?” Karkat asked curiously, sliding into the seat beside Dave, who tilted the phone screen at him so he could see for himself. 

Karkat whistled, then winced, then at last grinned at what he saw. “Ouch,” he said, blinking. “I think my eyes are bleeding after seeing that monstrosity.”

“That’s the goal,” Dave said, still smiling. “I sent you some choice ones as well.”

Karkat slapped his empty pocket and frowned. “Shit,” he said. “I think I left my phone downstairs. I’ll have to get it later.”

Dave remembered all of the barely concealed yearning his texts had revealed and felt a quick flash of discomfort. There was no way he could hide those messages from Karkat; he’d have to find some way to explain it away. Maybe. Hopefully. 

“Boys,” Mr. Vantas called out, turning around to face them. “It’s nice to see everyone awake at last. Did I miss anything interesting?”

Was that a jab at what the man had seen last night? Dave swallowed wordlessly, his face carefully neutral. 

“I don’t think so,” Karkat answered, his face both thoughtful and dismissive, as if he was lingering over the details while simultaneously trying to move past the subject. He waved his hand. “Just more full moon bullshit.” 

“Dave?” Mr. Vantas asked with one eyebrow raised. “How was it for you?”

Dave painted himself with false innocence. “Boring,” he said. “I watched a lot of YouTube and listened to music mostly.”

“And made memes,” Karkat spoke up happily, relieved. 

“Yes, and made memes,” Dave agreed, hiding his hours of stress. “Slick should be here soon to pick me up.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Mr. Vantas said as Karkat’s face fell. “I was just about to whip up some pancakes for everyone.”

As alluring as the idea of fresh homemade pancakes were, Dave’s head was too heavy with everything he’d seen, thought of, and experienced over the past sixty hours to let go of his inner anxiety. The thought of eating right now made him feel sick. “Actually,” Dave said. “I’d rather not intrude further. Thanks for having me over and housing me for a few days, but I think it’s best if I leave soon.”

Karkat looked plainly hurt, a deep crease forming between his eyebrows, so Dave quickly said, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

The uncertainty didn’t leave Karkat’s face, but he agreed. “Tomorrow.”

The next few seconds were filled with awkwardness until Dave’s phone vibrated. He scanned the message with a flick of his eyes. 

SS: I’m outside, and don’t leave anything behind because there’s no way in hell that I’ll drive your ass back over here to pick whatever you forgot up.  
Dave: fine ill be out in a minute

“Slick’s here,” Dave said out loud. He didn’t try to hide the melancholy in his voice. “I’d better go.”

Karkat looked on the verge of saying something, but he ended up shrugging. “I’ll text you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Dave nodded, and then he drifted out into the living room to pick up his already packed up backpack. He headed to the door.

Karkat was waiting there for him, his dad nowhere in sight. Alone, Karkat looked more animated and open. “Dave,” he said, and his voice held weight behind it.

“Sup,” Dave said back just to ruin it, unwilling to have this talk right now. “That’s my name.”

Karkat rolled his red eyes. “I think we need to talk.”

Oh shit, how much did he remember? Dave didn’t know the answer, but he did know how to deflect. “Can we talk about this later?” He asked, not playing dumb, shooting his eyes at the kitchen where Mr. Vantas still sat, obviously listening. 

Karkat lingered, but at last he nodded. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll text you. Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for everything,” Karkat said, and then he opened his arms and embraced Dave again.

This time Dave was ready for it as he hooked his arms around Karkat’s back, the memory of his heartbeat loud in Dave’s mind. He liked this, being close, but for the first time it wasn’t enough as Dave hugged Karkat back with all of the words he couldn’t make himself say. He hoped his touch would be enough to get the point across. 

“I’m here for you,” Dave promised, his voice lowered as he breathed the words across Karkat’s shoulders. “Always.”

Karkat just squeezed him tighter, and this was getting too intimate for just friends but neither of them wanted to be the one to let go. 

Dave cracked first, stepping back. He cleared his throat. “I’ll see you soon.”

Karkat nodded, opening the front door. “Now get out,” he joked, swallowing hard enough that Dave could hear it. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dave stepped past him, careful not to brush against Karkat as he moved by. His knees felt weak. He didn’t look back. 

Outside the sunlight was blinding as it reflected off the paved driveway and the glossy paint of Slick’s black car. Dave squinted even through his shades as a bolt of discomfort shot up his optic nerves. Slick’s car was idling, the engine purring softly as Dave opened the passenger door. 

The fed was immediately growling at Dave in his growly voice. The thick scent of cigar smoke filled the air. “Kid,” Slick grunted out. “You’ve got to learn to answer your goddamn phone.”

Dave shrugged as he put on his seatbelt. “I’ll answer if you call me,” he compromised. “Texts… eh, those aren’t too important, right?”

“Wrong,” Slick said, but there was a grin in his voice as he put the car in drive. “Calls might be for emergencies only but I still wanted to have some sort of contact with you.”

Dave felt the chafe of his ankle bracelet. “You knew exactly where I was,” he said. “And no news is good news.”

“So…” Slick trailed off as the houses began to flash by. “How’d it go?”

Dave kept quiet. His mind was still processing everything that had happened. 

“What?” Slick prodded at him. “No screaming? No disgust?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Dave said with steel in his voice, defending Karkat. 

Surprisingly, Slick merely nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d bet not. There’s not much that kid could do to scare you off, is there?”

Dave said nothing, but the silence was telling. 

Slick nodded again, his voice gentle. “You’ve got it bad, huh?”

“Fuck off,” Dave said emotionlessly, turning away to stare out the tinted windows. 

Slick sighed. “Watching you two idiots dance around each other is going to give me an anxiety attack before much longer,” he grunted out, and silence fell over the car. 

Dave pondered Slick’s words. Did he really have it bad? How was that possible? How had he fallen in love with someone he’d never so much as kissed before? They’d never even held hands. How could Dave have fallen for Karkat across the careful inches they kept between themselves?

He spoke without thinking it through, his voice low. “Maybe it won’t be for much longer.”

The tires crunched as they pulled into the loose gravel of the safe house driveway. Slick cut the car off. They sat there in silence for a moment.

“Dave—”

“Don’t,” Dave interrupted. His fingers were white against the knee of his jeans. “It doesn’t matter, does it? I can’t tell him the truth about me—I fucking can’t. But I can’t lie to him either, so I’m stuck in this hellish limbo of maybe/maybe not forever.”

“I was going to say,” Slick said sternly. “That, and I’m speaking apart from my job as your handler here, because telling him the truth is fuckin’ stupid and dangerous, but…” Slick shrugged his shoulders. “For all the sins you carry, even the ones I don’t know about, here’s always a chance he’ll feel the same way back.”

Dave gulped. His throat hurt, but the faint idea of that elusive chance Slick spoke about spurred him on. “Slick,” Dave began uncertainly. “What does love mean to you?”

Slick’s single eye stared out the car windshield into the scraggly pine trees, strangely distant. “Love?” He said. “Well, love means forgiveness. First for yourself, then for the other person.” He turned to Dave, his expression serious. “You want to love? It’s the hardest thing there is, but it comes naturally all the same.”

“How do I do it?” And Dave hated the weakness in his voice, the admittance that he didn’t properly understand the emotion that should have been instinctive. Bro had never loved him, that much was certain. But Dirk? Hell, that had been so long ago. Dave had been a different person then. Was he still capable of love? Of being loved? 

“Start being honest with yourself first,” Slick told him. “And everything else will follow.” He huffed out an abortive laugh. “Shit,” he said. “Any other handler’s division would be staunchly against this kind of tomfoolery with a civilian, but me? Fuck, me and the rest of the Crew will throw a fuckin’ party when the two of you finally stop lying to yourselves. Especially Clubs, that loveable bastard. He’s been rooting for you from the start.”

“Really?” Dave said, interested despite his embarrassment. His face felt flushed. 

“Yeah,” Slick said, and he was staring out the window again. “Now go get in the house before something else happens. I don’t trust you with anything more substantial than your teenage hormones kicking in at last.”

Dave barked out a loud laugh and left the car grinning. 

…

It was later that night that Dave received the texts he’d been dreading.

Karkat: DAVE? ARE YOU THERE?  
Dave: when am i not here?  
Karkat: SHUT IT WITH YOUR BULLSHIT BEFORE IT EVEN BEGINS—I JUST WANT TO TALK.  
Dave: about what  
Karkat: YOU KNOW WHAT  
Dave: and?  
Karkat: AND?????? FUCKING AND?????? IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO? OH MY FUCKING GOD DAVE I AM GOING TO SCREAM OUT LOUD INTO THE NEAREST PILLOW AND IT IS GOING TO BE YOUR FUCKING FAULT.  
Dave: you cant expect me to have a serious conversation after you give me such a brilliant opportunity for an innuendo like that seriously man not cool. screaming into pillows? thats more ammo than what small wars fight with  
Karkat: SHUT IT!!!!!  
Karkat: CLEARLY SINCE I AM TEXTING YOU I HAVE MY PHONE BACK, AND I SAW THE TEXTS YOU LEFT ME.  
Dave: oh shit  
Karkat: OH SHIT? REALLY? IS THAT THE BEST EXCUSE YOU CAN COME UP WITH?  
Dave: no i just dont feel like making some half assed bullshit excuse when i meant every word i send you

Distantly Dave knew he was making a big mistake but he couldn’t make it stop happening.

Dave: I meant it  
Dave: all of it  
Dave: it might have been a bored spiel that got out of hand but at least its full of real shit

Now to try and salvage what he could.

Dave: like im sorry that you have to go through this every month it sucks and if i could find some way to help you more than sleeping on your couch and making sure you dont spontaneously expire every few hours id do it in a heartbeat.  
Karkat: THIS…  
Karkat: THIS WAS ABOUT ME BEING A WEREWOLF?

Dave took the out offered to him.

Dave: yeah man full moons SUCK for you and id like to help  
Karkat: SO YOU’RE NOT DISGUSTED OR TERRIFIED OF ME?  
Dave: no?  
Karkat: AND YOU’RE NOT GOING TO RUN SCREAMING FOR THE HILLS THE NEXT TIME WE SEE EACH OTHER BECAUSE I’M SUCH A GHASTLY HUMAN BEING THAT BARELY QUALIFIES AS HUMAN?  
Dave: dude no why would you even think that  
Karkat: I DON’T KNOW, YOU WERE JUST IN SUCH A HURRY TO LEAVE….  
Karkat: I THOUGHT….  
Karkat: NEVERMIND.  
Dave: no what? what is it?  
Karkat: I  
Karkat: I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO LEAVE ME, JUST A LITTLE, BECAUSE I AM A PARANOID MOTHERFUCKER WHO OVERTHINKS EVERYTHING.  
Dave: i literally said as i was leaving that id always be there for you  
Karkat: I KNOW OKAY! I WAS JUST STRESSED AND FREAKING THE FUCK OUT ABOUT A LOT OF SHIT THAT DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER.  
Dave: like?  
Karkat: LIKE THAT GOD AWFUL NEWS INTERVEIW I HAVE TO GO TO THIS WEEK.  
Dave: fuck thats this week? shit where did all that time go?  
Karkat: YOU TELL ME. IT DOES SEEM LIKE IT JUMPED UP ON ME EXTREMLY FAST BUT THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN BECAUSE I’VE BEEN DREADING IT FOR SO LONG.  
Dave: are you still going to go to it?  
Karkat: HELL YES.  
Karkat: IS IT WEIRD THAT I’M TERRIFIED BUT STILL ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT IT? LIKE THERE’S SO MUCH THAT COULD GO WRONG BUT AT THE SAME TIME, FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT THERE I WILL BE THE ONLY POSITIVE REPRESENTATION OF LYCANTHROPY THEY EVER EXPERIENCE AND THAT’S A LOT OF PRESSURE.  
Karkat: SO IVE GOT TO GET IT RIGHT. THERE WON’T BE ANY SECOND CHANCES.  
Karkat: I WISH I KNEW WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO ASK BEFREHAND SO I CAN PREPARE BUT THEY WANT TO KEEP ME HONEST SO I’M CLUELESS. I THINK THAT’S THE WORST PART—THE NOT KNOWING.  
Karkat: AND ITS ON A FRIDAY IN IOWA CITY SO I’LL HAVE TO MISS SCHOOL AGAIN.  
Dave: isnt iowa city like two hours away?  
Karkat: YEAH.  
Karkat: I’D INVITE YOU TO GO WITH ME BUT SOMETHING TELLS ME THAT YOUR HANDER WON’T ALLOW THAT.

Dave pictured the scene and suppressed a shudder.

Dave: yeah. live tv news, a fuckton of cameras and people in a new and crowded place… slick would flip his shit if i even asked  
Dave: which is why im totally going to do it  
Karkat: DAVE NO. IT’LL JUST START A FIGHT BETWEEN YOU AND I DON’T WANT TO CASUE MORE STRIFE BETWEEN THE TWO OF YOU.  
Dave: aw but our handler/charge relationship thrives off of a sense of mutual antagonism  
Karkat: WELL IT SHOULDN’T. I KNOW HE TRIES REALLY HARD FOR YOU. MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY TO CUT AGENT SLICK SOME SLACK.  
Dave: nope cant have that what if he think im going soft?  
Dave: im losing touch with my gangster ways stuck in the middle of fuckoffsville iowa-- fucking with slick is the least i can do to hold onto my street cred  
Karkat: I HIGHLY DOUBT YOU EVER HAD STREET CRED, PLUS YOU’RE TOO SMART TO BE A MOB PUSHER.  
Karkat: AND YET I CAN SEE YOU’RE STAGNATING HERE, SETTLING DOWN INTO SOMETHING CALMER AND MORE IN CONTROL SO MAYBE LOSING TOUCH WITH YOUR OLD WAYS IS A GOOD THING.  
Dave: what do you mean?  
Karkat: YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN YOURSELF WHEN YOU FIRST GOT HERE. YOU WERE A TWITCHY, STRESSED-OUT ANXIOUS MESS, NOT THAT YOU’RE MUCH DIFFERET NOW, BUT BACK THEN I COULD FEEL THE DARK CLOUD HOVERING OVER YOU. YOU KEPT YOUR EYES ON THE EXITS AND FIDDLED WITH YOUR PENCILS LIKE YOU WERE PRACTICING USING IT AS A WEAPON. YOU WERE TIRED ALL THE TIME AND YOU NEVER FUCKING SMILED. YOU WALKED LIKE YOU WERE EXPECTING TO GET JUMPED FROM EVERY ANGLE AND NEVER SAT WITH YOUR BACK TO THE DOOR.  
Karkat: I KNOW THAT YOU MUST HAVE BEEN THROUGH SOME REALLY BAD SHIT AND I KNOW THAT IT LEFT ITS MARK ON YOU, BUT ITS GOOD TO KNOW THAT SOMETIMES TIME CAN HEAL OUR WOUNDS. YOU DON’T WALK LIKE YOU HAVE THAT SAME WEIGHT ON YOUR BACK ANYMORE. YOU SMILE, YOU JOKE, YOU LAUGH AND I CAN SEE IT MOVING BEHIND YOUR SHADES SOMETIMES, THAT HINT THAT MAYBE THINGS ARE GOING TO BE OKAY. 

Just hearing that made his skin crawl and Dave instinctively looked for the door to his safehouse bedroom. He wasn’t sure what he thought about that, but,

Dave: karkat… what if losing my edge isnt a good thing?  
Karkat: WHY NOT?  
Dave: its just that edge, that semi-neurotic behavior you noticed—thats what kept me alive  
Dave: losing it might seem well and good to you but until this manhunt is over id rather keep my edge in my back pocket you know, just in case  
Karkat: SO IT IS A MANHUNT THEN?  
Dave: you prolly should have figured that part out by now  
Karkat: I KNOW BUT THAT’S THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE SAID AS MUCH OUT LOUD. AND OUT OF CURIOSITY, WHAT SKILLS DO YOU MEAN? YOU KNOW, ASIDE FROM BEING A NERVUS BALL OF STEELY ANXIETY THAT YOU COVER WITH A THIN VENEER OF COOLGUY CHILL AND INDIFFERENCE.  
Dave: fuckin OUCH no need to @ me like that  
Karkat: AND YOU HAVE SO MANY SCARS. I’VE WONDERED ABOUT THAT TOO, AND THOSE ARE JUST THE ONES THAT I CAN SEE. I’M SURE THE REST OF YOU LOOKS JUST AS CUT UP.  
Dave: does that bother you?  
Karkat: DAVE IT LOOKS LIKE YOU TRIED TO FIGHT A WOODCHIPPER AND LOST, OF COURSE THEY BOTHER ME.  
Karkat: YOU’VE BEEN HURT SO MANY TIMES…  
Dave: yeah  
Dave: I guess i have been but that doesnt really bother me anymore  
Karkat: BUT IT BOTHERS ME.  
Karkat: I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU. I DON’T WANT TO JUST BE ANOTHER SCAR YOU ADD TO YOUR COLLECTION ONCE SLICK YANKS YOU AWAY TO SOME OTHER SMALL NOWHERE TOWN WHEN THINGS GO SOUTH WITH THAT CASE YOU CAN’T TELL ME ABOUT. 

And in that instant, Dave wanted to tell him about it. About Bro. He didn’t and the crazy notion passed within a few heartbeats, but the silence he left in the chat was telling.

Karkat: YOU WANT TO TELL ME, DON’T YOU?

Goddammit. 

Dave: i used to not for a lot of reasons but the idea is warming up to me  
Dave: i  
Dave: i do think that you are able to handle the truth  
Dave: but  
Dave: but im not  
Dave: im not ready

There it was—the truth was out. Dave wasn’t ready to freely admit to his sins quite yet. He wasn’t ready to shed the weight of his errors when he still believed he deserved their burden. 

Somehow, Karkat understood.

Karkat: THAT’S OKAY DAVE.  
Karkat: I’LL STILL BE HERE WHEN YOU ARE READY.

Dave let out the breath he’d been holding. 

Dave: thank you. 

He signed off for the night, watching the fading sliver of light that fell from the slats in his window blinds cut themselves like diamonds across his hands. His scars shone silver. From all that he’d heard about love, it was supposed to hurt. He was used to getting hurt. He’d been hurt a lot, so often he’d lost count, and that wasn’t just physical pain either. Losing Dirk was a pain he still felt, the wound unhealing. Even his heart was deeply scarred. And if he couldn’t escape from the pain, he might as well embrace it.

Karkat was worth it. 

But not now, not when Dave was dealing with his own mountain of shit. First, he had to work through his own issues. Dave let his eyes slip closed, remembering Slick’s words about forgiveness, and texted back Karkat one last time.

Dave: hey quick question thats in no way shape or form suggestive at all  
Dave: what does love mean to you?

The reply was instantaneous.

Karkat: LOVE? THAT’S EASY.  
Karkat: LOVE IS A CITY WE BUILD OURSELF. 

…

For the next week Dave stole secret glances at Karkat while they were at school, simply watching him. Now that the weather was cooling off his ever-present sweaters and long sleeves didn’t stand out as much even if the plush fabric still swallowed him up. Dave could barely keep his eyes off his friend, and even behind the relative safety of his shades Dave was sure Karkat had noticed.

Ever since Dave had begun to entertain the impossible idea that he might actually be in love with his best friend, he’d catch Karkat watching him too and the subtle gleam of his eyes meeting Dave’s from the next desk over or from across the bus aisle made an unnamable feeling bolt through Dave’s chest and flutter down to his toes, warming him on the inside like he’d swallowed a flame. 

It was like a game, a secret they both held together, neither one wanting to break first. It led to a lot of awkward dancing around that Dave secretly loved. It was like they were two satellites in orbit, coming closer with every pass, knowing how spectacular the inevitable collision would be. 

Dave sat in his chosen seat in the front office as Officer Johnson and Karkat joked about some lame video currently circulating around the internet. Karkat’s laugh came from deep in his chest, something merry and mirthful that had his shoulder’s shaking. 

“What is it?” Dave asked curiously. 

Karkat tilted the phone at him, revealing a somewhat dumb-looking cat with an inexplicably long tongue failing to drink out of a dripping sink. It was kind of hilarious. 

“Dear god,” Dave said, exaggerating his swoon as he slumped over in his chair. “I can’t—it’s too fucking cute.”

On screen the fluffy white cat continued to miss the water every time. Karkat was smiling. The sunlight shone in through the window in Principal Warren’s office and illuminated the dust on the floor. Dave felt warm and happy. There in that office, his sins seemed very far away. 

Then Officer Johnson had to go and ruin it. “So,” the policeman drawled. “What about that interview I hear your dad talking about, Karkat? Any plans or concerns for it?”

Karkat instantly scowled, his happy expression falling away. “Only the usual,” he said. “You know, constant threat of death aside it might actually be fun.” The sarcasm in his voice was scathing. 

“Then why do it?” Johnson asked, concerned.

Karkat shrugged. “Someone has to,” he said. “And I’m not going to let fear control me. If the country has its doubts about me then they can say them to my face.” 

The stubborn bravery impressed Dave. He couldn’t imagine facing his own fears head-on like this. He said as much out loud. “I think it’s brave,” he admitted. “I could never do something like that.”

“Why not?” Johnson asked because he didn’t know any better. 

Dave said nothing, but Karkat understood all the same. 

Still, Karkat seemed moved by Dave’s silence. “Dave?” he asked. “Did you ever talk to Slick about going to the interview with me?”

Dave shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “I’m putting it off for as long as physically possible.”

“Why?”

“Procrastination is my superpower.”

Karkat rolled his eyes, complaining. “Dave.”

Dave shrugged. “He’s going to say no,” he said. “We both know this as a fact, so why not put it off?”

“Because he might say yes?” Karkat said hopefully. 

Dave pulled out his flip phone and texted Slick. 

Dave: yo my main agent guy  
Dave: quick question  
Dave: karkat’s got this big tv interview thing friday that im sure you know everything about up in iowa city, wherever the fuck that is  
Dave: so without preamble….. can i go?

The answer came a minute later. 

SS: A fuckin’ LIVE TV interview and you want your ass to be there?  
Dave: no but karkat wants me to go  
Dave: moral support and all that shit  
SS: I thought you would have known better than to even ask. This is stupid, Dave. Plain stupid.  
SS: No.  
SS: No, you can’t go. That should be fucking obvious.  
SS: You two fuckin’ kids are going to give me duel heart attacks one of these days.  
Dave: yeah yeah i know  
Dave: just had to ask

Dave tilted the phone screen at Karkat. “The verdict’s in,” he said, sighing. “I’m still under mandatory house arrest.”

Karkat scanned the words and frowned. “Damn,” he said. “But it was worth the shot.”

“Maybe,” Dave admitted. “But I’m not the biggest fan of cameras or crowds of people, so obvious danger aside it really isn’t my style anyway.” He gave Karkat the smallest of grins. “I’ll have to be with you there in spirit. When you feel the ghost of the worlds ultimate coolguy shiver across your vision like yesterdays’ bad gas station sushi, making everything technicolor and generally more awesome than it was before, just know that I’m there with you.”

“Sounds like the stomach flu,” Karkat joked. 

“Or being high,” Johnson added in, squinting suspiciously at Dave. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Dave couldn’t help the laugh that burst from him at the thought of drugs and him having contact with each other. “Nope,” he said, still laughing. “No drugs for me. I eat my school and get twelve hours of vegetables a night.”

Karkat was grinning. So was Dave. The idea of him with drugs was laughable. Bro was many things but above all that psycho had valued a clear head and while Dave was okay with throwing most everything Bro had taught him into a burning garbage fire, the no drugs one seemed to be pretty common sense. 

Johnson looked skeptical, but then all cops were trained to be skeptical about people’s supposed drug innocence. Bro had also taught him to never trust a cop, that law enforcement were all evil minions of the deep state and while Dave still generally didn’t trust most institutions of power, Johnson seemed okay to him. 

The bell rang then and Dave had to trudge back to class. The semester was wrapping up and the teacher’s panic about tests and finals didn’t touch him. He spent the rest of the day planning out the rap lyrics of a song he’d never let anyone else see. 

History class was one of the few classes Dave would intermittedly pay attention in. Sometimes he’d pick up stay tidbits of information that he was sure would remain stuck in his mind for the rest of time. Today the teacher was droning on about old cities and the romans, who Dave had never really given a shit about. Lots of old world cultures thought throwing outcasts or political opponents to lions was fun—the romans weren’t special. 

But this talk wasn’t about the culture—it was about the great city they’d built between seven hills and the two men who had founded it. Dave had heard the myth before. Romulus and Remus, the wolf-twins, some of history’s only werewolves cast in a good light and how they’d inspired their followers to band together and founded a city that would last through the ages. Believed to be demigods for their feats of speed and strength, the brothers had managed to turn their curse into their greatest strength. 

This was of course back when wild wolves still roamed freely and people could catch the disease through contact with them. In the legends Romulus and Remus had been suckled by a she wolf, and Dave reckoned that would be plenty of chanced contact to spread lycanthropy. 

In a way the legend made Dave feel sad. History was rich with negative portrayals of werewolves, from witch-burnings to Middle Eastern ‘wolf hunters’ who patrolled the countryside looking for werewolves. The legacy of Rome was the one reminder that not all werewolves were seen as monsters and hated for their monstrous ways. In ancient Rome it’s two werewolf founders were seen as chosen by the gods and used their unnatural speed, strength, and healing to aide them in battle. But they were also great philosophers, politicians and leaders of men. Their strength wasn’t just in their wolf. 

Dave looked at Karkat, his enraptured face fixed on the teacher as she lectured about the historic wolves, and he through about the upcoming interview and what it meant to Karkat. He thought about the life Karkat had built here with his father, about Karkat’s words on the meaning of love and how it was like building a city. He thought about Rome and its grandeur, and its inevitable fall.

Dave watched the light shine in Karkat’s beautiful eyes and wondered how long he could play this game before everything came crashing down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a generally slow chapter but the next one will be the act one finale so I thought you deserved a breather before the storm begins. 
> 
> And remember— everything is important. There’s nothing I didn’t add in to mean something else later on ;)


	15. chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! The end of act one!
> 
> Enjoy! :)

Friday struck with a vengeance as Dave was hit with the first fist of midterms. Not that he really minded the tests themselves. It was the reminder that the school year wasn’t going to last forever that was freaking him the fuck out. Summer loomed large with all its uncertainties and mindful revelations that Dave still didn’t know what to do with.

So he shoved all of his nagging doubt away and focused on the present difficulty that was bothering him—Karkat’s interview. The rest would come later as time inevitably marched on. For now Dave would rather ignore everything that was out of his control. 

Dave could clearly read his friend’s growing stress as the school day wore on. Karkat’s shoulders were tense, his eyes kept darting around and lacked focus, and for the first time that Dave had seen Karkat’s hands were shaking as he laid them on the desktop. He didn’t eat lunch either, just picked at his food, moving it around repetitively with his fork in a mindless way that made Dave want to hug him. Damn, Karkat must really be freaking out. 

Dave tried to help but today Karkat wasn’t having his jokes. “Hey,” he said anyway, nudging Karkat with his elbow. “So, tonight, yeah? Are you ready for it?”

Karkat kept his eyes on his paper even through he’d stopped taking notes soon after picking up his pencil. 

Dave tried again, ignoring the teacher droning on in the background. “I bet you are,” he said, his mouth running without conscious input. “Hollywood will weep their silver tears out when they catch sight of you on the big screen, mourning what they could have had if you were more interested in acting. What a fuckin’ loss.”

Karkat, short-tempered and snappish, shot back a reply without looking at him. “Shut the fuck up, Dave. I’m trying to concentrate.”

Dave blinked behind his shades, the venom in Karkat’s voice shocking him into an unusual silence.

Karkat seemed to realize what he’d said and guilt flooded his stressed face. “Shit,” He moaned, covering his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

Dave said nothing. He merely shrugged. 

“No, really,” Karkat insisted. “I’m being an asshole and I’m apologizing for it. You didn’t deserve that, not from me and not from anyone.”

Dave shrugged again, his voice lowered. “It’s okay,” he said. “I can take it if you verbally lash out at the world today. You’re stressed. You didn’t mean it.”

The guilt didn’t leave Karkat’s face. “That doesn’t excuse me from being an awful person.”

Dave didn’t know how to answer that. No one else in his life would have thought to apologize for something so trivial as a flippant dismissal. He shrugged again and Karkat gave him one last sorrowful look before turning back to the teacher. 

The rest of the school day was just as rocky. Dave felt like he was treating on eggshells around Karkat. He felt tense, like he was waiting for something to go wrong. 

On the bus, right before the driver dropped Karkat off at the school board office, Karkat finally began to thaw. Dave noticed the deep breath his friend took and had focused on him before Karkat had even opened his mouth. 

“Okay,” Karkat said, swallowing. “I’m sorry today sucked ass. I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now.”

The bus crawled to a hissing stop. Dave could see Mr. Vantas waiting by his car, the engine already running. 

“Good luck out there,” Dave told him, meaning it. His voice was steady. “I’ll be watching the broadcast, and I’ll be with you there in spirit, remember?”

Karkat cracked a small, forced smile. “Like gas station sushi.”

“Just like gas station sushi,” Dave vowed. “Go knock them dead.”

Karkat nodded, steel flashing in his red eyes as he stood up and made his way off of the bus.

Dave watched him go. The bus pulled away before he could see Karkat get into his dad’s car but he could imagine their embrace a Mr. Vantas caught sight of his son’s stressed face. It made his own body long for a touch he wasn’t allowed. 

The bus reached the safe house in record time. Slick didn’t try to talk to him today, busy typing away at lightning speed on his laptop as his phone repeatedly buzzed beside him. As interested and curious as Dave was, he ignored his handler. He had other things on his mind right now. His case could wait for tonight. 

Seven O’clock could not have come any slower. Dave resisted the urge to text Karkat the entire way up the long drive to Iowa City as he piddled around his room doing everything except for his homework. It felt like most of his life consisted of waiting now. Waiting for Bro to find him. Waiting for Slick to realize the truth about what Dave had done. Waiting for Karkat to finally come to his senses and leave him behind. Waiting for the day when Dave would wake up on the wrong end of his brother’s sword. 

Or, worse, waiting for the day when Karkat would finally kiss him. It was a day Dave regularly dreamed about now. That one was the real agony because with the other ideas Dave could convince himself that no matter what, that was just the universe’s fucked up karma coming around at last. With Karkat, it was different because that was the one thing he wanted the most even when he knew he didn’t deserve it. 

At 6:30, Dave broke and texted Karkat. 

Dave: howre you doing?

It took a few minutes for Karkat to reply. 

Karkat: FINE, I GUESS. IT’S NOT LIKE I’M FREAKING THE FUCK OUT OR ANYTHING.  
Dave: that sounds like something someone freaking the fuck out would say  
Karkat: DAMN, YOU GOT ME DAVE. RED-HANDED EVEN. MY HANDS ARE SO RED RIGHT NOW THAT THEY LOOK DIPPED IN SCARLET PAINT COLLECTED BY MONKS IN THE MOUNTAINS OR SOME SHIT.  
Dave: ancient illuminators would walk hundreds of miles looking for the right ingredients for their paints you know. cant have this mid 12th century town bible colored plain as the poor people who couldnt fuckin read it anyway.  
Karkat: THAT’S WHY THE COLORS WERE SO IMPORTANT, MORON. THE PAGES WERE ILLUMINATED WITH THE STORIES BECAUSE THE COMMON PEOPLE WERE ILLITERATE AND NEEDED PICTURES TO UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS GOING ON.  
Dave: ok ok but did they need to get so fancy with it? like those old dudes went off with the boarder scripts and page frames and celtic knots and all that yet failed utterly as fuck when it came to drawing babies who at best looked like potatoes with faces and at worse like tiny versions of buff bodybuilders like i dont think those monks had ever seen a real child before  
Karkat: ONLY YOU COULD DEBATE THE FINER ASPECTS OF 12TH CENTURY BIBLE ILLUMINATION WITH ME, DAVE.  
Dave: but is it working?  
Karkat: IS WHAT WORKING?  
Dave: the distraction  
Karkat: I… I GUESS SO. I DO FEEL A LITTLE BETTER.  
Karkat: I GO ONSTAGE AT 7 AND EVEN WITH ALL OF MY STRESSING I DON’T FEEL READY.  
Dave: to be honest though i dont think anyone could ever be completely ready for something like this  
Karkat: MAYBE. BUT…  
Karkat: I JUST WANT THIS TO BE WORTH IT. I WANT THAT SO BAD IT HURTS.  
Dave: then youll get it  
Karkat: WHAT IF I FAIL?  
Dave: you wont  
Karkat: HOW DO YOU KNOW?  
Dave: i dont  
Karkat: THEN HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?  
Dave: because i believe there can only be so much bad shit in the universe at once before the good things start trying to balance things out again, star wars style  
Karkat: THAT SOUNDS LIKE BULLSHIT.  
Dave: it is bullshit but at least its hopeful bullshit  
Dave: when things get low what else do we have except our hopeful bullshit?  
Karkat: THAT’S A GOOD POINT.  
Karkat: I’VE GOT TO GO. I’M ON IN TEN.  
Karkat: I GUESS I’LL TALK TO YOU SOON?  
Dave: hey  
Dave: bring down the fuckin house for me  
Karkat: I’LL TRY.

Dave put his phone down, breathing deeply through his nose as he went out into the living room. Slick only paused for a second when Dave picked up the unused and neglected TV remote and the small screen flickered to life in a sea of static. Dave turned it to the right channel, where the news reel was showing highlights from the most recent school attack. Dave grimaced as the headline caught Slick’s attention.

The agent huffed, lighting a cigar only to immediately snub it out with two fingers on the ashtray beside him. “If your name or face pops up in this thing,” Spades Slick warned in his gravelly voice. “Pack your shit. We’re leaving.”

Dave nodded numbly, the scent of the smoke burning in his nose as his eyes took in every word that was being said on screen.

The headline read: THE DANGERS OF LYCANTHROPY: AN INTROSPECTIVE LOOK AT THE DISEASE THROUGH THE EYES OF WEREWOLF KARKAT VANTAS. 

Dave frowned. Karkat would hate that title more than he’d hate being called a wolf. A blonde reporter read through a brief summary of the wolfsbane murder attempt, and every second Dave grew more and more tense, waiting for his name or face to pop up. Somehow it never did. Slick must have done his job well, buried all hint of Dave’s involvement. 

And then Karkat walked in. The camera did him the immediate disrespect of zooming in for a close-up of his scarlet eyes before panning out to showcase the police force in the room. Karkat all but marched across the short stage to take his seat across from three reporters. A small crowd waited in rows of chairs to the side, several holding cameras and microphones. There was a clip-on mike attached to Karkat’s collar. He wasn’t wearing a suit, just slacks with a button down. His dark hair was still as wild as it always was and Dave’s heart gave an aching pang. 

“Mr. Vantas,” the first reporter began.

“It’s just Karkat,” Karkat interrupted. He looked tense, but he was relaxing as the reporters ran through a few of the opening questions, easy shit like how was your day and did the drive treat you well?

“And have you recovered from your unfortunate reaction to the wolfsbane used in the latest attempt on your life?” A different reporter asked, and Karkat’s face froze. After that the game was on. Dave watched in tender hooks as Karkat expertly answered. 

“Yes, I have, thank you,” Karkat said, graciously dipping his head in her direction in a subtly sarcastic way. “That’s not the first time someone has tried to kill me.”

“And why is that?” The first reporter asked, her voice curious. 

“Because I survived,” Karkat said shortly. “I was never meant to live through the first attack, the one that infected me. But because I did, the world now has something it hasn’t had in decades—a publicly known werewolf. That alone makes me a target for a lot of people out there.”

“And why do they target you?”

“Fear,” Karkat said simply. “Hatred. Rage. You can take your pick out of the vocabulary of wrongdoing to explain why it is that when people know that I’m alive, they want to kill me.”

“So you see yourself as the victim here?” The last reporter asked, his face merciless. 

Karkat’s eyes flashed to the man, his expression cold. “No,” he said. “The friends that I murdered… they’re the victims. Their families are the victims. Me? I’m just the unlucky ******* that lived through their death.” 

There must have been a few second lag in the live recording because the curse was bleeped out, but Dave could clearly read Karkat’s lips. 

“Moving on from that—” a reporter tried.

“No,” Karkat interrupted again. His hands were clenched in is lap. “I have something I want to say to the world. You don’t get to ‘move on’ from what happened that day. It’s bull****. It’s impossible.” He took a deep breath. “I was used as a tool,” He explained. “I was simply a means to an end. That day, the other wolf could have chosen any student to Turn, and through sheer dumb luck he chose me and every day I have to live haunted by the things I’ve done. I can’t ever forget it.”

“Yes, it was a great tragedy,” A reporter offered, looking both baffled and sorrowful. “The worst wolf attack in modern history.” 

“But not the only one,” Karkat argued. “People die every year from rouge wolves. I’m sure there’s a handful of us squirreled away in our lives across the world, clinging to survival however we can.”

“Do you think their survival is worth the risk they pose to the rest of humanity?” The blonde reporter asked, getting into the hard questions just to force the world to hear Karkat’s answer, to pin him in place, to watch him squirm. 

Karkat blinked, his face overcome with thought. “I ask myself that question every damn day,” he said, and his eyes looked ancient in his young face. The weight of the bags under his eyes was mirrored in the hunch of his shoulders. “I’ve taken every precaution in the world to ensure that what happened with me never happens again.”

“And yet you go to a public high school,” she shot back at him. “One that was recently put under threat by your existence.”

“Do you mean my near-death?” Karkat laughed and it wasn’t a happy sound. It was bitter and full of self-hate. “There were never any students in danger. There was a highly trained officer on the scene in seconds. The medical team got there in under five minutes. If the worst happened and I Turned, I’d have been shot on the spot on my own orders.” Karkat paused and his eyes were hard. “I will never let myself be a danger to others ever again. I would willingly die before I let that happen.” The way he said it left no doubt—he was serious. “I’ve designed a foolproof system so that I’m not a threat during full moons, I attend the safest high school in the country that’s been heavily modified to accommodate the risk of having me around, and I’ve done everything in my power and more to ensure that I’ll never hurt anyone ever again.”

“Because that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it?” the reporter said gently. “You have hurt people before.”

Karkat didn’t deny it. “I have,” he admitted. “I hurt a lot of people that day. I hurt far more than I killed, but even then I knew enough to try and prevent what damage I could.”

“What do you mean by that?” The only guy reporter asked. 

Karkat shrugged. “Most people don’t have a good idea on what lycanthropy really is,” he explained. “They think it’s just a disease transferred by biting, like rabies or something. They forget the part where it exists as a curse as well.” Karkat’s face was steady as he continued. “Wolves were supposed to be our brother species. They kept the balance in nature and the natural world even as we destroyed it with our industry and our advancements. We even turned to wiping them out as preventative self-defense when the wolves played their final, desperate trick to try and stop us—lycanthropy, the magic disease controlled by the moon that turns people into wolves.” This time Karkat didn’t laugh. “It’s crazy, right? It sounds crazy but that’s a reality I live every f****** day. People get so entrenched with the science of it that they forget the magic of it. It’s a curse, but it’s a curse that has to be willingly transferred.” Karkat took a deep breath. “I didn’t Turn those kids I bit, all of the ones that survived. All of the nearly fifty students I attacked that were lucky enough to survive—I didn’t Turn them. I knew even then that there would never be another wolf created by me. And if I’m wrong and there’s less of us werewolves out there than the world thinks, and it a pitifully small number at that, maybe ten at most… then let me be the last.”

Dave felt his arms pimple with chills at Karkat’s words as Dave considered the one fact he’d never considered before. Karkat hadn’t Turned those kids he’d bitten. He’d at least spared them the same fate as him. 

On screen they went back and forth over a few more questions until Slick gently took the TV remote from Dave’s nerveless fingers and switched it off. “I hate fuckin’ reporters,” Slick complained. “Always getting their noses into other people’s business, poking around where they shouldn’t. Makes me fucking sick.”

Dave said nothing. He felt stunned by the sheer bravery Karkat had shown on stage. He hadn’t backed down, he hadn’t hesitated, and he sat tall and let the world know he was here. 

“Slick,” Dave said, talking before his brain could remind him how afraid he was of the result. “Would it be possible to lure Bro out of hiding if you used me a bait?”

Slick blinked and did a double-take. “What the fuck,” he said. 

“I could be bait,” Dave explained, rushing through his words. “I’m the only thing that might draw him out of whatever hole he’s locked himself away in.”

Slick dismissed Dave’s idea without a second though. “Too dangerous,” he said. “I won’t even entertain the fuckin’ thought.” He looked at the clock on the wall. “And it’s getting late. You should get some sleep.”

It wasn’t even 9 yet. “You can’t just fucking dismiss the only good idea you’ve got.” Dave argued.

“It’s not a good idea,” Slick shot back, rubbing his hand along his brow. “If this were a mob boss we were talking about or some lower criminal, yeah, let’s go for it, but this is your Bro we’re talking about. He WILL kill you, Dave.”

Dave closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the couch. “I know.”

“Then why even ask?”

“Because,” Dave said. “I’m getting tired of being afraid.”

…

By Saturday Dave was back at Karkat’s house to celebrate the victory with him. The interview itself was playing on the TV from a recording Mr. Vantas had set up. They ate chips on the couch as outside the growing clouds darkened the sky to black, but inside it was safe and warm and dry.

“It’s getting late, boys,” Mr. Vantas yawned, stretching out his arms over his head as Dave and Karkat looked over at him. “I think I’ll head upstairs. Let me know if you two need anything.”

“Okay, Dad,” Karkat promised, setting his bag of chips aside as he leaned back. “We will.”

On screen Karkat continued to lecture, his eyes blazing. Pride warmed Dave’s chest like a miniature flame. Next to him Karkat was still talking, pointing out little details about the interview that Dave might have missed, but Dave wasn’t listening. He was overcome with emotion. 

Karkat was so close that Dave could feel the warmth from his body. It made concentrating difficult as on screen Karkat stared down the trio of reporters, brave and fearless. On the couch beside him sat the same Karkat, every bit as selfless and passionate as the werewolf on the screen. 

“So,” Dave said, also leaning back just enough to angle his body towards Karkat, balancing a large bowl of Doritos on his lap. “Watching you go on stage to face the crowd made me realize something.”

“What’s that?” Karkat asked curiously. 

Dave made a face, uncertain still of how much he wanted to say. He could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket but Agent Slick could wait a second—this was more important. “All my life I’ve been a coward,” Dave admitted. “All my life I’ve been afraid of… of someone,” he fumbled his words around the truth he couldn’t tell. “But watching you go on stage made me realize that I could do the same thing, that I could maybe face my fears.”

“You know,” Karkat said, looking at him, and in the half-light from the TV his eyes burned. “You never told me what you were afraid of.”

“I…” Dave trailed off. He was afraid of the truth, afraid for himself, afraid that the world would hate Dirk for what he’d done to survive before Bro killed him, and most of all afraid of Bro. He could name none of these fears to Karkat, but as he stared at his friend his heart gave a sharp pang and he realized a new fear.

“Karkat…” Dave said, shifting his body closer to his friend, who unconsciously moved closer too. “Karkat,” Dave said, addressing him directly. There was only a handful on inches between them. His lips were dry. His breath was shaking as he admitted one single truth. “I’m afraid that I’m in love with you.”

He watched, terrified of what he’d just said as Karkat’s eyes widened and the recording clicked off as the reel reached its end. The room was plunged into darkness. All he could hear was the sound of their own breathing. The light slowly came back as the TV switched itself back over to the live news.

Karkat shifted, suddenly facing Dave. “Dave…” he trailed off. Dave could see his knuckles whiten, then relax as he loosened his grip on the couch. 

Dave held his breath as Karkat started to lean in. His hand came up to cup Dave’s face and the gentle touch was everything Dave had ever wanted. His heart was pounding loudly and his body felt flushed. He reached up to take Karkat’s hand and held it tightly. Karkat’s fingers were warm against his cheek. 

“Dave, I,” Karkat tried again, swallowing. Then determination crossed his face and he began to close the gap between them.

Dave tilted his head down, wordlessly leaning into the kiss. Karkat’s mouth was soft as silk and Dave had no idea how to kiss someone but damn it felt good just to press his lips against Karkat’s. It was short, simple, and unbearably sweet and shy. It was everything he’d ever dreamed about. His eyes closed as he felt Karkat smile against his lips, and for one shining second all was good with the world. 

Then his phone rang, the nasal, droning buzz interrupting his good mood as Slick butted into the tender moment from the safe house. “God damn you, Slick,” Dave sighed and leaned away, his cheeks flushed until a cold feeling settled over him as he stared at the ringing phone, the letters SS stamped across the incoming call. 

“What is it?” Karkat asked, sitting upright again, his cheeks also ruddy. 

“He’d only call if it were an emergency,” Dave said, his voice hollow as he fiddled with the call button as the call ended and Slick immediately rang him again. He didn’t want to answer the phone but knew he ought to. 

Right before he could accept the call, on the TV screen the boring news story switched over into something new.

“BREAKING NEWS!” The headline read, “VICIOUS TEXAS SERIAL KILLER STRIKES AGAIN, TAUNTING POLICE IN CHILLING NEW MURDER. VICTIMS MIGHT NUMBER OVER A HUNDRED.”

Dave froze, his shoulders going stiff as the phone fell from his numb fingers. The screen showed an up close view of a brick wall that Dave didn’t recognize. The large, drippy orange spray paint letters sent a bolt of panic through him as he instinctively recognized that lazy scrawl. 

Snitches wind up in ditches, the letters read. I’m coming for you, little bro.

The last two words were obviously written in blood. Yellow police tape surrounded the scene and the still photograph showed red and blue highlights from the flashing lights of squad cars. A dark stain splattered across the pavement, gleaming wetly. 

Then came the final blow like a last fuck you from the universe—a picture of the victim’s face.

Dave thought he was going to throw up. His stomach heaved. His skin felt cold. _He knew her_. 

“Dave?” Karkat asked, his voice oddly distant. “Dave, are you alright? Dave? Dave!”

Dave could feel Karkat’s hands on his shoulders, two points of heat against his frozen body. He didn’t react. It felt like he was frozen in ice. If he moved, he would shatter. 

His phone rang again, loudly, and this time Karkat snatched it up from the floor where it had fallen and flipped it open. ”Hello?” A pause. “Yeah,” he said, his voice worried. “He’s not hurt but I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

Dave was shaking so badly that the bowl of chips in his lap slipped to the floor, making a huge mess that he didn’t even see. His vision had narrowed down to nothing. He couldn’t stop seeing her face in his mind. It felt like the sight of the graffiti was branded with a hot iron across his frontal lobe. It was all he saw. 

“T, t, turn it off,” Dave stuttered, forcing his numb lips to move. 

“Turn what off?” Karkat asked, concerned and searching for whatever it was that had set Dave off until his red gaze fell on the news reel.

Watching Karkat read those damning letters was like feeling the cold steel of a knife slip beneath his skin. It was over. It was all over—everything was ruined. Karkat _knew_. 

Karkat’s shocked eyes fell on him again, incredulous and hurt, but there it was, a growing recognition. The fatal understanding Dave had been struggling to avoid for weeks. 

The screen flickered over to a shot of the graffiti again and Dave had to experience the hurt all over again as it finally clicked into place in Karkat’s sharp mind. _I’m coming for you, little bro. _

And there it was, the thing Dave had been avoiding all this time breaking like the dawn across Karkat’s face—horror. 

“Oh God,” Karkat said, and his hands fell still. Dave could vaguely make out the tinny sound of Slick yelling through the phone but they both ignored the agent. “Dave, no…. No.” He was shaking his head like he could refuse the facts laid bare before him. “Not that, please.”

The _please_ is what broke Dave as he stared up at his friend, wordless. Getting stabbed had hurt less than this and his shoulder gave a twang just to remind him of the wound. 

“No,” Karkat said.

“I’m sorry,” Dave said, his voice shaking. “I’m sorry.”

The admittance seemed to clear Karkat’s head enough for him to realize what was happening. His eyes glittered wetly. “Shhhhhh,” he whispered, and he switched off the TV so that the room was plunged into darkness. And underneath Dave’s fear of Karkat knowing was the terror that Bro felt brazen enough to taunt him, and he knew the victim, knew her face, knew her name, and with that he knew that all of the people he’d managed to spare were next on the hit list as Bro systematically undid what little good Dave had managed to do while in that damn apartment. He closed his eyes, gulping past the bitter tang of acid in his mouth. 

He couldn’t hide from it anymore. He’d have to tell Slick the truth now. All of it. 

Headlights blazed through the front windows as Dave hear a car screech to a sliding halt. Seconds later and there was a pounding at the door.

Mr. Vantas appeared in the darkened hallway, blinking in confusion> “Boys?” he called out. “Why’s it dark in here? Who’s at the door?”

“It’s just Agent Slick,” Karkat called back to him, dropping down beside Dave. “Hey,” he said softly. “Slick’s here for you. Can you walk?”

Dave couldn’t even feel his legs. His very bones felt frozen. “No.”

Karkat nodded. Dave could barely see him in the dark with his shades on as Karkat laid his hand against Dave’s cold face. Dave didn’t react. 

“Okay,” Karkat told him. “I’m going to pick you up now. Don’t freak out, alright?”

Then the soft material of the couch was gone as Dave felt himself lifted up like his superior weight meant nothing to Karkat. Karkat’s arms didn’t waver as he gently lifted up Dave, who instinctively clung to him.

“I’m letting him in,” Mr. Vantas called out as the pounding at the door came again, the front door swung open with a boom as Slick charged into the home. 

“Where is he?” Slick said, worry carving deep lines down his face as Karkat carried Dave into sight.

“I’ve got him,” Karkat said as Mr. Vantas gaped at them.

Dave stared straight ahead, unseeing. He couldn’t stop seeing the blood behind his eyelids each time his pulse spiked with his pounding heart.

“Give him to me,” Slick ordered, and Karkat clutched him tighter. 

“I’ve got him,” Karkat said again, stubborn to the end. “I can carry him.”

“What’s going on?” Mr. Vantas asked, shocked and confused as the storm wind whipped leaves in through the open door. They scattered like mice across the floor, like the roaches that plagued Dave’s bedroom growing up. The wind smelled like rain. 

“No time to talk,” Slick said, his voice rushed. “Dave, we’ve got to go.”

The thought sent a bolt of sheer panic through Dave’s nearly catonic frame. He started shaking again. “No,” he said, clinging harder to Karkat’s shirt with his fingers. “I can’t leave now.” Leaving Karkat now, after everything that had just happened would be unimaginably cruel. “Please.”

Slick seemed to hear his almost too-quiet words. He bent down to put his face near to Dave’s, speaking softly. “Dave, it’s going to be alright.”

“No,” Dave said again. Lies. Nothing would ever be alright again. 

“I’m just taking you back to the safe house,” Slick told him. “We’re not leaving town. Running now would be stupid—that’s what he want. He wants fear and panic and rash decisions—it’s why he did this.”

No, that wasn’t true. Bro did this to shot a bolt directly at Dave’s heart, at the life he’d managed to build here. But he couldn’t say that when his throat was rapidly filling with bile so he kept quiet, swallowing down his sickness. 

“Let me get you home,” Slick said, but the safe house wasn’t his home. Dave didn’t have a home now. 

“Here,” Karkat said softly, and Dave felt himself being transferred to Slick. The leather of his coat was cold as someone worked his hooked fingers free of Karkat’s shirt. 

“Come on,” Slick said, turning to the door, to the storm. “Let’s go. I’ve got you, Dave. It’ll be okay.”

Thunder crashed overhead as the wind dug freezing claws into Dave’s hair. He breathed it in, the lightning flashing in the greenish sky. He vaguely realized what that shade of cloud meant, the threat it held, but it was a dull realization at best. He had bigger, badder things to worry about than tornadoes. 

Slick set him in the running car. The headlights illuminated both Karkat and his dad, who were still standing lost and confused on the front porch. The nearby tree branches were whipping in the breeze. 

“Come on,” Slick said, revving the car engine. The car snarled beneath him, hot and loud as he tore out of the driveway.

The entire way back to the safe house Dave couldn’t erase the way Karkat had looked at him as the rain at last began to pour down and splatter across the windshield in beads that flowed like the tears Dave wanted to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHAT A CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> wow
> 
> im in shock too i swear
> 
> but in all honestly i really really LOVE this chapter. its the part where shit starts to hit the fan for real as all these plot lines i've been building start the process of coming together. I can say this for sure thought--
> 
> Shit's going to be lit yo
> 
> (and as always feel free to hop on the HS writer's discord to chat with me about this fic)


	16. chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took longer than expected but its extra long to make up for it ;)
> 
> Get ready, this one is a wild ride for sure.

He didn’t remember getting back to the safe house. He didn’t remember sleeping. Dave was aware of time passing around him but it was like his brain simply wasn’t processing the truth of his reality. He remembered watching the rainwater bead down the car windows, illuminated by flashes as bright as the sun before the crack of the thunder shook him to his bones. He remembered feeling the percussive sound vibrate through him, his skin a drum, his flesh held together with earth and blood and wires as everything started to unwind and snap apart under the stress of his own thoughts. 

Dave didn’t know how long he sat hunched in the corner of his bedroom with his head bowed and his knees drawn up to his chest. He never looked at the clock on the wall, his frozen eyes fixed on the cracking veneer of the floor. A few times Slick came in to check on him, opening the door to occupy the space between the door frames so that his shadow fell across the spot of floor Dave was stuck staring at. That’s the only way Dave knew his handler was there. Slick never said a word, only watched for a few minutes before silently leaving again. 

Sounds reached him, eventually. The distant overbearing crash of thunder as the storm tore across the small Midwestern town, sirens in the distance, the front door slamming, the sound of heavy boots and Hearts Boxcars’ earthquake of a voice. He didn’t really pay attention to what words were being spoken, his mind lost in a deep fog, until he heard his name. 

“Dave’s having a hard time,” Slick said, his voice lowered. “I won’t bother the kid with an interrogation right now. That’d do more harm than good.”

“Spades,” Deuce said, his normally cheerful voice a hissed whisper. “I’ve been looking all night and I don’t have any connection linking this new victim to any of the previous ones. There’s still no pattern to it. You need to ask Dave what he knows before Strider leaves us another body to find.”

“That’s new, for him,” Boxcars grunted. “Leaving behind bodies. We still haven’t found any of the other victims.”

“So he’s taunting us,” Slick concluded. “He’s getting brazen, more confident. More violent. That girl wasn’t just murdered—she was _massacred_. There wasn’t enough of her left intact for us to ID her if he hadn’t left her wallet behind for us to find. He’s escalating.”

Dave shut his eyes, blocking out the sound of his own heavy breathing to hear better. 

“What do we know?” Slick again. Dave could hear him pacing the floor, the creaky wood squeaking beneath him with every step. 

“She was dumped in a public place, but there’s no witnesses, no cameras in the area, no evidence found within the last few hours that points to anything sloppy. He abducted her first probably, does his bloody work, then dumped the body outside her apartment building.”

“And the message?” Slick asked. 

Dave held his breath. His heartbeat was the loudest thing he’d ever heard.

Silence. Complete, utter silence, then—

“It was for Dave,” Deuce admitted softly. “Bro’s not taunting the police at all… He’s threatening Dave.” 

Slick sighed. Dave hugged his knees tighter to his chest. 

“And now a woman is dead,” Droog spoke up, his voice tight with anger. “Spades, you can’t keep babying him. You say he’s not ready to talk, but fuck that. _Push him_. We NEED answers.”

“No, we need to—”

“Spades,” Droog interrupted, his voice harsh. “We’re out of time. I know you wanted to do this gently, to ease him into it, but someone is fucking dead because we dragged our asses playing babysitter. Something needs to change.”

“And what if we push Dave for nothing?” Slick spat back. Anger clouded his tone. “What if we break him? What if we push and push and get jack shit in the end because all along he’s been telling the truth and doesn’t know anything he hasn’t already told us?”

“You’re a fool if you believe that,” Droog answered. “That kid’s a Strider. Lying’s in his blood. He’s still just trying to cover his own ass. Hell, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t actively involved in these murders. That kid wears his guilt like a second skin. I fucking _know_ he’s got blood on his hands.”

“Diamonds,” Slick warned. 

Droog went on. “He lived in that apartment for years, Spades. And he did nothing! All those people that he identified for us, he fucking saw them with his own two eyes. He knew what would happen if he did nothing and he chose to let it happen anyway. Their blood stains his soul, not ours.”

Dave squeezed his eyes shut tighter until all he saw was static. 

“Lack of action isn’t a crime, not when its from a scared kid,” Slick defended him. “Bro would have killed him.”

“News flash,” Droog said. “I don’t care.”

Stunned silence, then—

“You’re a heartless bastard,” Slick accused. “He’s just a kid.”

“He’s a criminal,” Droog shot back. “He’s no better than the bad guys we hunt every fuckin’ day.”

“For what?” Slick demanded to know. “What’d he do to you that was so fucking awful that you’ve got this grudge clouding your opinion of him like this?”

“He is complicit in dozens of murders and you’re asking me what he fucking _did_?” There was a loud bang as Droog slammed something hard down onto the countertop. “If he wasn’t our only witness his ass would be in jail forever. Or a mental ward. The kid’s fucked up. Why else would he be withholding valuable information from us like this is some kind of fucking game?”

“Because he’s still scared!” Slick hissed out, and the sound of his pacing stopped.

“Scared of what?” Droog asked, his voice dangerously low. 

Another heavy pause, and Slick sighed again. “Diamonds,” he said. “There’s still things we don’t know. Whatever was going on in that apartment’s gotta be more fucked up than I can imagine. I think we’ve only scratched the surface of what horrors that kid went through. That’s why he’s scared. He’s protecting himself from the truth.”

Droog said something else but Dave had stopped paying attention. Even sitting alone in the corner of the safe house in the dark, Dave had to admit that Bro was an evil genius. His threat had been a carefully calculated one. 

One that was about to ruin everything. 

Dave thought about the truth, about the woman who’d been killed, about what he knew Bro was going to do next. And that was what was so fiendish about what Bro had done. He wasn’t threatening Dave—he was forcing Dave to reveal the true depths of his sins. 

So now Dave had a choice to make. He could do nothing, cling to his ignorance and his false innocence, and again do nothing as the bodies piled up. That was the safest choice.

But even as Dave thought about that option it was abhorrent to him. It would be proving Droog right, for one, and it would undo what little good Dave had managed to do while stuck in that hellhole of an apartment. It would get more people killed, people he’d thought he had saved. 

Dave pressed the pads of his fingers into his eyes until everything dissolved into meaningless colors as in the kitchen the federal agents continued to argue. 

In the end, it wasn’t much of a choice at all. Dave wasn’t the same scared kid he’d once been, and if Bro was forcing him to spill his secrets then fuck it, and fuck Bro. Dave would spill some secrets.

Behind his closed eyes Dave still saw the expression on Karkat’s horrified face. Dave was done for and his heart felt rubbed raw, so all that was left was to make the destruction of the life he’d built here official. 

The doorknob was cold against his palm as Dave left his bedroom behind. His feet were silent down the short hallway. He pulled his shades out of the neck of his shirt and set them in place to hide his bloodshot eyes, steeling himself as the agent’s voices grew louder. 

He stepped around the corner. The kitchen was bright and crowded, the small table abandoned, the chairs still tucked in. Everyone was standing.

Dave swallowed thickly, teetering from foot to foot with his hands in his pockets. Slick’s back was turned as the agent argued with Droog. Deuce was busy typing away at his laptop. Boxcars was the one who spotted Dave lurking in the doorway but that huge bastard did nothing but nod silently and let Dave announce himself with a small cough. 

Everyone in the room froze at the slight sound. Slick turned around slowly, his shoulders stiff. “Dave,” he said, unsurprised. “What do you want?”

What a loaded question. Droog crossed his arms, foot tapping. 

Dave took a deep breath. It was time to stop running. It was time to stop being afraid.

“Deuce,” Dave said, looking at the tiny man, who stopped typing to look at him. “I know what connects this victim to the others,” Dave admitted, the truth tearing his throat on the way out. His voice sounded hoarse. 

Clubs Deuce blinked at him in shock, but he quickly seized the opportunity Dave was presenting him. He rapidly began typing again without looking down at the keyboard. “I’m going to need you to explain that in detail.”

“I have a condition,” Dave said, his voice unflinching. 

Deuce looked uneasy. Slick took over. “What’s your condition?” He asked, deadpan. 

Slick probably expected Dave to ask for immunity or something, but Dave had come to terms with his own criminality long ago. Someone had to pay the price for all the blood that had been spilled.

“I also know exactly who Bro is going to target next,” Dave said, and even Slick looked stunned. “My condition is that after I tell you the connection between the victims, you keep those people safe. Don’t let Bro get to them because he _will_ kill them too.”

Slick didn’t even ask questions. His response was automatic. “Deal.” Slick rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a recording device. He switched it on, the red light blinking as he set it squarely in the center of the table. “Sit down, Dave.”

Dave fell into the offered chair. His entire body was shaking again. “So,” he swallowed thickly. His throat hurt. “How do I do this?”

Slick sat down in the chair next to him, just far enough away that Dave didn’t feel crowded. “Just start talking. Tell us what you know.”

Dave tried to explain. “Actions have consequences,” he began. “I always knew that Bro would find a way to punish me for running away, for turning him in… this is my fault. This is all my fault.”

“Dave,” Slick tried.

“No,” Dave interrupted. “Let me finish.”

Slick shut up. Deuce stopped typing. Boxcars leaned like a redwood tree against the doorframe while Droog looked at Dave with the interest that a snake gives a mouse. 

Dave didn’t say anything for a long time, struggling with himself as the seconds ticked by. Slick let him sit and stew for a while longer than Dave anticipated he would before the fed prompted him gently. “Who was she?”

“She was innocent,” Dave said, breaking. “She never met Bro or knew about him before he snatched her. None of them did. They were all innocent.” He was falling apart. He would have choked up if it weren’t for Slick’s questions.

“How did you know her?”

“Same way I know all of his victims,” Dave admitted. “He stalked her online for weeks.” It had been almost a year and Dave still remembered her face. He remembered all of their faces. His mind was a graveyard populated by his own hand. He felt sick. 

“This was back when you were still in the apartment?” Slick asked, surprised. 

Dave nodded miserably. “There’s… there’s something you don’t know.”

Slick waited patiently as Dave fought with himself. He didn’t push, didn’t pry. Just waited. 

Dave took a deep breath, savoring his final taste of freedom. It was over. The game was up. Bro had won. “Bro, he didn’t just find his victims alone on the internet. Every time he’d go looking for his next payday he’d assemble a small group of possible victims, normally four of them at a time. That’s how I know her—she was once an option for him.”

Somehow, Slick was nodding along with him like this made sense. “She was one of the ones he didn’t choose,” he guessed shrewdly. 

Dave continued recklessly, rushing to get the words out before he could change his mind. “Bro never chose his actual victim,” Dave said, completely emotionless. “I did.”

Silence. Complete, utter silence. There was something moving in Slick’s face, his expression shifting into something that made Dave look away because he couldn’t bear to see that stubborn hope Slick held for him die. 

No one said anything for a long moment. Dave just sat there, shaking, waiting to be judged and found guilty. 

“Dave,” Slick said at last, said his name, not _kid_, and his voice was coldly serious. “I’m going to need you to explain what you mean by that.”

“What do you think it fucking means!” Droog spat out, interrupting. His face was a thundercloud of anger. “It means he’s a fucking murderer! It means he was in on it the whole fucking time!”

Dave shrank into his chair at the sudden outburst, cowering as the federal marshal continued. 

“So that’s it?” Droog demanded. “That’s your big fucking secret?” He slammed his hands down onto the countertop so that everything rattled, every line etched with rage. “Is that what you got off on, you little freak? You like getting to decide who lives and who dies? You like—”

“Diamonds, stop,” Slick ordered, his voice harsh. “Dave…”

But Dave had heard enough. Each word was another nail in his coffin, and he was done with playing this sick game. 

“Dave,” Slick tried again. “I know there must have been a reason for—”

Dave interrupted him, already throwing up walls around his heart, distancing himself from the fed so that what was coming might hurt less. “You can cut the shit with the whole ‘good cop, bad cop’ act,” Dave told him coldly, his hands in fists as he shot a hostile look at where Droog was standing. “I could hear the two of you talking from inside my bedroom. I know what you’re trying to do to me.” He’d seen enough cop shows to know what was going on. He forced himself to grow colder, locking out his emotions. “I’ll tell you the truth, but I won’t let myself be manipulated into it. “

“You motherfucker,” Droog hissed, stepping forward. “Up there on your goddamn highhorse like you’re some kinda saint.”

Dave stared coldly back, refusing to be intimidated. He wasn’t afraid of the agent. At the moment he wasn’t feeling afraid of anything. The feeling would have been invigorating if he wasn’t so miserable. 

Droog opened his mouth to say something else toxic, but Slick beat him to it. “Diamonds,” he said slowly. “Drop the act. It’s time to get serious.”

Dave almost felt smug about his minor victory. Almost. 

Still, Droog sulked. “It’s not an act if I’m still fuckin’ angry about it,” he complained. 

“Shut up,” Dave snapped at him, his temper worn thin. “You don’t get to be fucking angry about it.”

“Why the hell not?” Droog challenged him, grimacing. “You just admitted that you chose Strider’s victims for him. it’s not like he held a gun to your head and made you—”

“Yes, he did,” Dave said quietly, and then Droog shut up. 

Slick was still watching him silently, his gaze unfathomable as Dave began the long process of explaining the whole sad story. 

“Bro only started making me chose when I was about thirteen,” he said, omitting the fact of Dirk’s existence, because there were still things he needed to hide. “By then he knew that he’d failed utterly at raising me to help his twisted cause, and so he began the slow process of psychologically torturing me enough in the hope that eventually I’d break completely and be swayed to his side, presumably to help him with his murder criminal empire at the price of my own soul.” This was at least Dave’s way of categorizing why Bro had done what he did, because there must have been a method to the madness, otherwise nothing made sense. And things had to make sense because Bro was too smart to be a simple madman. Dave went on. “He did a lot of shit to me, bad shit, the worst stuff you can imagine living through, but forcing me to choose who he’d go after next? That’s the real fucked up one right there. Everything else? That was on me, I could fucking take it, but _that_?” Dave’s voice was shaking again, almost too broken to be understandable as he forced himself to continue. “That one was other people. And that’s the one I couldn’t fucking take.”

In a way, Bro had probably thought about it like a game. A back and forth of pain where he’d push Dave physically until he broke, but Dave wouldn’t break. He’d refused. All of 13 years old and counting his broken ribs, numbing himself to the idea that this was what life would be like now that Dirk was dead. In a sick way the knowledge that his brother had inevitably lost the same game Bro was now playing with Dave gave him strength. Dirk had been sixteen when he’d died. That left a lot of catching up to do for Dave, who at that point was deadset on surviving because, if he died, who else would exist to remember his brother? So Dave would grit his teeth and bear it. Pain was just pain. It was temporary even when it lingered for hours, even when the beatings came every single day. It was just pain. And pain was survivable. 

So when the beatdowns stopped being enough to force compliance, Bro had switched gears, diving straight into the mental anguish without warning. He’d come out of his bedroom, that off-limits lair where he planned all the bad things that happened. He’d been grinning, and that’s what had set Dave off. Bro never grinned unless it was about something awful. 

Then he’d spread out the five pictures on the table and carefully explained the rules of the game to Dave. It was simple. Five people. Five faces. Pick out the one that dies next, the one that Bro kidnaps and brings home to go into that back room, the one with the steel walls and the cameras and the blood that Dave couldn’t scrub out of the corners. Not picking wasn’t an option either—refusal to play simply meant that Bro would kill them all. 

And that’s what he told Slick. In the end it was nothing more than another sick mind game that Bro forced him to play. At first, young, naïve, and disbelieving, Dave had refused. He refused to pick at all, not wanting anyone else’s blood on his hands. This game between them had been bearable when it was strictly between them. Them and the ghost of Dirk Dave was still trying to make proud. As soon as Bro brought in other people Dave clammed up until Bro had driven a thin knife through the back of his hand and pinned it to the table. A second knife went to Dave’s neck.

“Pick,” Bro had threatened, and the knife at his throat pressed in threateningly, breaking the skin. It’s not like Dave didn’t believe that Bro would really kill him, because yes, of fucking course he would. This wasn’t a bluff, and over the burning ache of the knife through his hand Dave felt the threat of the blade at his throat offering him a clear out if he refused to play along. 

And damn it all, but Dave still wanted very badly to live.

“I rationalized it to myself like this,” Dave explained. “If I picked one, the others would get to live. That way I was at least doing something good enough to rationalize the necessity of my own continued existence.” He said it point-blank, no excuses, no justifications. He turned his shaking hand over to look at the small scar across the back of his hand. The blade had been thin enough that the mark didn’t really stand out all that much, its matching exit wound on his palm obscured by more scar tissue from where he’d once foolishly tried to stop a sword with his hands. It hadn’t even really hurt that much.

“So you chose them,” Slick confirmed, sounding sick. 

“I did,” Dave swallowed, gulping. “But that’s not all.” He wasn’t sure why he was telling this part of the story; it wasn’t relevant in the face of trying to save other people, but Dave just wanted the federal agents to understand how thoroughly his hands had been tied. “Those pictures? One of them was always me.”

Slick’s arm reached out like he was going to try and touch Dave, but Dave bristled so much that the fed didn’t push his limits. “Dave…”

“It started out with just one of my pictures,” Dave explained coldly. “It was always a shot of me from when I was sure I’d been alone just another reminder that they were always watching, that I was never unseen.” That had been the creepy part, seeing his own face printed out beside strangers whose fate was now in Dave’s hands. Him on the ratty couch, him looking out the duct-taped window, him asleep in bed, the angle always wrong for it to have been from the camera in the corner. Dave shoved the memory away, recoiling from the truth of it even as he spilled his guts. “But overtime the number of potential victims started going down, their photos replaced with more pictures of me… I left before the ratio hit 1:1. I’m not sure what I would have done if it ever came down to picking myself over a single stranger, but I knew that day was getting close. And I knew if I kept playing, one day Bro would flip the pictures over and it would only be my own face staring back at me.”

“Holy hell,” Deuce exclaimed softly under his breath. Dave could feel the eyes boring into him, feel the horror and shock, but he refused to let it move him. Living with Bro had taught him how to control his face, and no matter how he felt on the inside, Dave’s expression was detached, cold, and uninterested even as his voice shook. 

“He was always going to kill me,” Dave said. “The only question was when. But I fucked up his plan when I escaped and now he’s punishing me for it by going after the people I thought I’d saved.” He stared hard at Slick’s face. “So now it’s up to you. You’ve got to save them now. You can’t let Bro win.”

Slick stared back, his expression unflinching. “Tell me how to save them.”

The order snapped itself into Dave’s consciousness. For all of his efforts to separate himself from what was happening, this was still on him. It was still up to him. Dave looked at Deuce, his voice rushed. “I’ll need a computer,” he said. “I only know their faces. We’ll have to hunt for them, and we have to move fast.”

“How many are there?” Deuce asked, already typing as he pulled out a second laptop from the bag at his side and handed it over. 

“Around forty,” Dave answered, opening the computer as he went over who they were looking for. “They’ll be someone from the area that’s active on social media. No one under eighteen, and no one over fifty. Even mix of genders, races, and lifestyles.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Slick stated calmly. 

“It is,” Dave said. 

Slick stewed over his options. “We might search for days before finding anyone.”

“We might,” Dave admitted.

“And Strider could strike again at any moment,” Slick pointed out.

Dave dismissed the idea. “No,” he said. “We’ve got some time to work with. That bastard plans everything out beforehand. He won’t rush into this. He won’t make the mistake of being sloppy just for a show of violence. We’ve got a few days to work with for sure.”

“How do you know that for a fact?” Droog asked, speaking for the first time in a while. 

“Bro might be killing other people, but he’s still targeting me,” Dave explained. “He won’t know that I flipped on myself so soon. He wants me to agonize over choosing to reveal my guilt. He wants me to suffer, but I’m done playing by his rules. I’m done with playing this fucked-up game. So even with his planning obsession, I imagine we have a few days to work with before he leaves us another body to find.”

“Do you think he’ll leave the body for us again?” Slick asked. “He’s never done that before.”

Dave shrugged. “There’s no need for him to work under the radar now. He’s not trying to hide his work any longer. He wants the world to know that this is his doing. He _wants_ the news coverage. He _wants_ the theories from police and skeptics. He _wants_ the eyes of the world on him.”

“Why?” Slick asked.

Dave shrugged again. “Everything he’s ever done he put online for his ‘fans’ to see,” Dave explained, disgusted. “Now we’ve just given him a bigger audience.”

The Crew sat back, absorbing Dave’s grim words. Slick scowled, his hands in fists against the tabletop. “You ever get the feeling that we’re playing right into his hands?” he asked, frowning. “I feel like all we’ve ever done is react to this bastard. We’ve always been a step behind.” He looked at Dave again, his single eye glittering. “But here’s where we change that.”

“How?” Dave asked, and he felt numb again, hollowed out from everything he’d said. He was at the bottom of a pit he’d dug himself, looking up at the far-off light with no way of reaching it. 

“Because we have you,” Slick stated the fact plainly, like he believe in it. “Kid, you know that bastard better than anyone. You know how he thinks. You know why he acts. And I know it’s hard to strike at a target whose location we don’t know, but you’re about to give us the next best thing.”

Dave just stared back at him, not understanding why Slick sounded so hopeful, not understanding why he wasn’t in handcuffs yet.

“You’re going to tell us where Strider is going to be,” Slick explained. “And with that information we can not only save lives, but hopefully end his.” The fed looked at his teammate, full of a stubborn, spiteful hope. “Hearts, put on some coffee, will you? We’ve got a long night ahead.”

…

True to Slick’s word, no one got any sleep that night. Dave stayed up with Clubs Deuce, combing through pages and profiles and a thousand other social media platforms for anyone that he might recognize. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack made of other needles. 

Dave spent hours tearing through individual profiles and quickly began to realize how hopeless this was. There were so many pictures to look through that trying to count them all was pointless. Dave scrolled through photo after photo, hoping for a hint of recognition, growing more and more disappointed as the hours wore on without a single hit. But Dave was determined and for once completely focused on the task at hand, and he barely noticed the time slipping by until the red light of dawn began to show through the kitchen windows. He ignored it. School wasn’t in the books for today. He had more important things to worry about, like stopping a madman. 

He worked at a frantic pace, merely glancing at a person’s profile before switching to the next one in the long line that Clubs was assembling. Boxcars kept the coffee that Dave didn’t touch coming. Droog talked on the phone with other investigators from the murder scene and lab analysts, trying to get ahold of every scrap of information. Slick just typed in silence at his own computer, watching everyone with a keen eye.

Lunchtime passed and Dave’s eyes were starting to ache from staring at screens for so long. Not even his shades could help him out with this. Every time he reached up to rub at his itchy, dry eyes Slick would stop typing for a moment, but then Dave would dive back into his work and the fed would resume writing without a word. 

Time kept marching forward and with every second the totality of the hopeless situation began to dawn on Dave. There had to be a better way to do this. He was getting nowhere sifting through Facebook pages and Instagram profiles. 

It was around five o’clock that Slick called off the hunt, finally ceding to defeat. “Kid,” he said gently. “You need to take a break. Eat some food. Sleep.”

“I don’t need sleep,” Dave answered hoarsely. 

“Dave,” Slick said, his voice firm. “Stop. That’s enough for now.”

Dave refused to look up until Slick reached over and slowly slid the laptop away from him. Part of Dave wanted to be petty and snatch it back, but the fleeting emotion was lost under a wave of numbness. As soon as his hands left the keyboard, his manic energy deserted him. He sat there, defeated.

Dave blinked over at the federal marshal. His eyelids weighed a thousand pounds. “This isn’t working,” he admitted. “I can’t do it. There’s too many people to sift through and not enough time. There has to be a better way.”

Slick mulled over the words, eyeballing Deuce. “Clubs,” he called out. “Options?”

The smaller man jumped into action, shrugging off hours’ worth of apathy as he began listing other ideas. Dave couldn’t help but wonder how long the fed had been busy thinking up solutions to this fruitless search. “Facial recognition software could cut our searching time exponentially if Dave could simply draw us an approximation of each potential victim. We could run the sketch through the databanks for any hits.”

Dave shook his head, rejecting the idea. “I’m no artist,” he said. “There’s no way I could draw an accurate human being with like, eyes and shit. I can’t even draw a straight line.” If Dave’s non-existent art skills were their last hope, they were fucked. 

“There’s another option,” Clubs Deuce said slowly. “But it hinges on an uncertainty.”

“What is it?” Dave asked, feeling wary. Something told him to tread lightly. A warning began to ring in the back of his head. He braced himself for the worst. 

“There’s something we’re not considering here,” Deuce told him, looking grim. “Dave, how smart do you think Strider is?”

“What?” Dave asked, shocked at the unexpected line the questioning had taken. He’d honestly been expecting to be bait or some other equally awful and dangerous Hail Mary. 

“How intelligent is your Bro?” Deuce said again, and for the first time he stopped typing, his attention solely on Dave. 

“Why do you want to know?” Dave asked.

“We need to know exactly how he’s getting access to the targets,” Deuce explained. “From what we know of him, of his actions on the darkweb, his criminal empire, his evasion of law enforcement, we can gather that he’s sharp as a nail and twice as cunning, but remember, its potentially been years since he researched these people. How can we know that he’ll remember them accurately enough to follow the list in your head?”

“You think he’s bluffing?” Dave challenged, anger stirring in his belly. He’d been hit enough times to know that Bro never bluffed. If Bro was threatening more civilian casualties, he fucking meant he’d carry through with that threat. 

“No,” Deuce decided. “I think he’s very serious about what he does. And what he means to do. The question is, can you say with any certainty that Bro possesses a memory like yours?”

Dave didn’t even have to consider it. “Bro’s a fucking evil genius,” he said at once, his fingertips tapping at the table. “I wouldn’t put that shit past him.”

“So we can eliminate the possibility that he’s working from an online backup he’d stashed in a secondary location before we raided his apartment?” Deuce asked. 

Dave snorted. “That guy is too paranoid to ever trust a backup in any way. If he did it online, he did it from the apartment. The only server he trusted was his own.”

For some reason, this just made Deuce seem even more frustrated. He sighed, sitting back. “So I’m right then.”

“About what exactly?” Slick asked, too casual, but Dave could see the tendons tight in his neck. 

Clubs Deuce looked around the room. His eyes were angry and lost. “I think the only way to gain proper access to the other potential victims in time is by accessing the data stored on Strider’s computer. The one that we located during the raid. It’s sure to have all of them safely stored on it, especially if Bro was as obsessive as Dave says he is.”

“You mean the one that tech still hasn’t broken into?” Droog barked a laugh. “It’s been months and we still haven’t cracked that fucker open.”

“I know,” Deuce said, refusing to give up. “I was just thinking…”

“The timeline’s not right,” Droog said, dismissing the idea. “There’s no way we crack the code before Strider strikes again. It’s just as hopeless as throwing all these damn photos at Dave and hoping for a goddamn miracle.”

“But if we could break it,” Deuce argued, growing heated. “That could be our answer. That could solve nearly everything! What do we have to lose?”

“More innocent lives,” Droog snapped back, his thin lips drawn back in a grimace. “Tech has been working at that puzzle for months. It’s irrational to place our hope in a sudden breakthrough.”

Dave closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair as he listened to them argue back and forth. He felt jittery with nerves. His hands were shaking. 

“Dave,” Slick interrupted his mini-breakdown. “You okay?”

“No,” Dave answered honestly. “But did you really expect me to say yes?”

Slick grunted and Dave opened his eyes. The fed was staring at him. “Dave,” he said again, his voice serious. “Breaking into Strider’s laptop might be the key to saving those people. Is there anything you want to tell me about that? Anything at all? Right now we need all the help we can get.”

Dave was already shaking his head before Slick finished asking. The fed had carefully worded his opening, giving Dave the perfect opportunity to come clean about facts he didn’t have. “I don’t know the codes,” he answered. “Bro never told me them. I never saw him type them in. I don’t know anything about how computer coding works or I’d offer to try it myself but I _do not know_.”

“Are you sure?” Slick asked him, and Dave stared at the man impassively because once, he had known someone capable of hacking into Bro’s private computer. But Dirk was dead and Bro’s secrets had died with him, buried somewhere out in the red dirt of the desert with the rest of Dave’s failures. 

He didn’t say anything else. He’d run out of words long ago when it came to Dirk so he let the silence press in on him until at last Slick gave up the fight and slowly turned away. 

Dave went back to looking through the pictures Deuce had assembled without a word, stuck in the only thing that felt like he was helping, no matter how pointless it was.

…

The sun had finished setting by the time that Slick finally forced Dave back into his room for a night of rest. Dave was certain he could feel every part of his skeleton cry out in relief as he flopped heavily onto his unmade bed. He hadn’t been this exhausted in years, but there was still one last thing of work to do before he let unconsciousness claim him.

He checked his texts.

They were all from Karkat and Dave felt his heart give a painful squeeze. 

Yesterday 7:15pm.

Karkat: WE NEED TO TALK.

Yesterday 8:33pm.

Karkat: ARE YOU STILL THERE?

Yesterday 11:22pm.

Karkat: DAVE THIS IS FUCKING SERIOUS WE /NEED/ TO TALK PLEASE ANSWER ME BACK.

Today 7:06am.

Karkat: DAVE PLEASE TALK TO ME I’M SO CONFUSED.  
Karkat: I’LL SEE YOU AT SCHOOL, OKAY?

Today 12:00pm. 

Karkat: IT’S LUNCHTIME AND YOU’RE STILL NOT HERE. I’M GETTING WORRIED.  
Karkat: PLEASE JUST TELL ME YOU’RE ALRIGHT.

Today 3:45 pm.

Karkat: DAVE I’M SORRY I’M SO FUCKING SORRY JUST PLEASE ANSWER ME!

Today 5:55pm.

Karkat: OH MY GOD, YOU’RE GONE, AREN’T YOU? SLICK TOOK YOU SOMEWHERE FAR AWAY AND I’LL NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN. OH MY GOD.  
Karkat: NO.  
Karkat: PLEASE NO.  
Karkat: YOU PROMISED, REMEMBER?! YOU PROMISED THAT EVEN IF SLICK TOOK YOU AWAY THAT YOU’D STILL TALK TO ME! I JUST WANT TO KNOW IF YOU’RE OKAY-- I’VE BEEN FREAKING OUT.  
Karkat: DAVE?

The last message was from just under fifteen minutes ago.

Today 7:40pm.

Karkat: PLEASE. I’M BEGGING YOU. DON’T LET THINGS BETWEEN US END LIKE THIS.  
Karkat: JUST… JUST TEXT ME BACK WHEN YOU CAN, ALRIGHT?

There was nothing else after that. Dave stared at the messages. Each one was like a hit to the face, but there was no time like the present and seeing the written proof of Karkat’s panic drove Dave into action.

He texted back.

Dave: hey

The monumental mental effort required to send the one word text wiped him out. Dave stared up at the blank expanse of the ceiling above him and closed his eyes. Behind his closed lids he kept seeing their faces, everyone he thought he’d saved, the people who were now relying on him to save their lives yet again even if they didn’t know it. Before despair took him under its dark wing, Dave felt his phone vibrate against his palm.

Karkat: YOU KNOW, I TOLD MYSELF EARLIER THAT IF I EVER HEARD BACK FROM YOU THAT I’D TAKE IT SLOW TO NOT INVOKE THE WRATH OF WHATEVER GOD SAW FIT TO GRANT ME THE MIRACLE OF YOUR COMMUNICATIONS AGAIN, SO EVEN THOUGH I AM LEGITIMATLY FREAKING THE FUCK OUT, I AM GOING TO IGNORE ABSOLUTLY ALL MY OWN BULLSHIT IN FAVOR OF HOPEFULLY NOT SCARING YOU OFF FOR GOOD. WITH THIS PAINFUL AND FRANKLY EMBARRASSING ADMITTANCE OUT OF THE WAY, I HAVE TO ASK… HOW ARE YOU DOING? ARE YOU OKAY? ARE YOU SAFE? I DON’T KNOW HOW TO WORK AROUND WHAT YOU CAN’T SAY AND I NEVER HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FIGURE THAT OUT, BUT PLEASE, JUST LET ME KNOW IF YOU’RE ALRIGHT.

Answering Karkat back seemed impossible with things how they were. What was there for him to say? It was simply too hard, but for Karkat, Dave was willing to make the effort. 

Dave: im alive and uninjured but i dont think ‘alright’ is a word that applies  
Karkat: GOD, DAVE, I’M SO SORRY.  
Dave: me too  
Karkat: DAVE…  
Karkat: I…  
Dave: i should have texted you back sooner. its dickish of me to have made you wait for so long and for that im sorry. i got tied up in some bullshit on my end and only got away now  
Karkat: IS THAT WHAT YOU CALL WHAT HAPPENED? BULLSHIT?  
Dave: no it wasnt bullshit

It was too late to try and hide the broadcast. The entire country probably knew about the Texas killer by now. Media outlets tended to love it when bad guys did things like publically taunt the cops. It made for a good story to run. 

Still, as the silence between them drug on Dave couldn’t help but poke at the fractured edges of his secrets, trying to gauge how much Karkat had put together. 

Dave: why arent you asking me if its true?  
Karkat: BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED TO TELL ME.  
Dave: because i all but admitted it or because youve guessed?

Another minute ticked by. Dave just wanted to sleep for a week. He wanted for things to go back to how they were yesterday morning.

Karkat: I DON’T THINK THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT OVER THE PHONE.

The evasion let Dave know everything he needed to. It was too late to try and salvage a scrap of his empathy after the last 24 hours, but he could still force himself not to be cruel even though he wanted to lash out. 

Dave: so you know?

Instead of answering, Karkat asked another question.

Karkat: WHERE ARE YOU FROM, DAVE? I KNOW YOU’RE FROM THE SOUTH FROM HOW YOU TALK BUT WHERE?

It was an odd way to go about getting Dave to spill the truth, but he recognized the sly play for what it was. He answered in turn, sticking to the truth by being as unhelpful as possible because he wanted to cling to the fantasy that Karkat still didn’t know who that body in Texas had been addressed to. 

Dave: gods country in a city no one gives a shit about  
Karkat: LIKE HOUSTON?

Dave closed his burning eyes, remembering the towering skyline of skyscrapers against the flat horizon, heat rising off the pavement, tar and blacktop and oil, the ringing clash of the ever-present construction work and car horns of the city he’d grown up in. Karkat knew. That much was certain. 

Dave: i dont think this is something we should talk about over the phone

And maybe it was cruel to throw Karkat’s own words back at him, but the probability of Dave having this conversation right now was rapidly approaching absolute zero. It was as much as an admittance that Karkat was going to get out of him at the moment and as damning as it was, for some reason Karkat didn’t press the issue. 

Karkat: OKAY. WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE FOR ME TO SEE YOU AGAIN OR HAS AGENT SLICK BOARDED YOU UP IN THE MIDDLE OF SEATTLE OR SOMETHING? BECAUSE I WOULD TOTALLY MAKE THAT FUCKING DRIVE IF IT MEANT SEEING YOU AGAIN.

Dave bit his lip, the words soaking into him. Neither of them had mentioned the kiss, but right now Dave felt the ghost of Karkat’s lips on his mouth. 

Dave: save your gas money—im still in town. i havnt gone anywhere and i dont think im going to. not yet anyway. not unless something else happens  
Karkat: OH, THAT’S GREAT! I WAS SO WORRIED WHEN YOU MISSED SCHOOL…  
Dave: i know. ive been working on something is all. i wont be in school tomorrow either.  
Karkat: WHAT ABOUT MONDAY?  
Dave: i… i dont know.  
Karkat: SO WHEN CAN WE TALK?  
Dave: ill try my best to get away some time this weekend but slick probably wont let me out of his sight for the next forever  
Dave: but i agree that meeting sooner rather than later is for the best because the more time that passes the more time i know youll spend googling facts about what the internet and media know  
Dave: i know this because thats exactly what i would have done and i know youve been sifting around online for answers as well. youre too smart to have not put two and two together by now with all the little hints ive inadvertently dropped around you like the worlds dumbest bread crumb trail, except this one doesnt lead out of the forest at all—it leads deeper in

There was an art to talking around the subject, each one of them parrying verbal lances at the edges of what was safe to say to see what truths would come bleeding out. This time it was a violent silence in between the seconds it took for Karkat to respond, and when he did, Dave felt his world shift around him.

Karkat: ONCE, YOU TOLD ME THAT YOU HAD A BODY COUNT. I HAD ALL KINDS OF THEORIES, EACH ONE MORE RIDICULOUS AND UNLIKELY THAN THE LAST. LOOKING BACK, I’M ASHAMED OF WHAT I THOUGHT ABOUT YOU. BUT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND THAT I DON’T THINK THAT WAY ANYMORE AND I HAVN’T IN A LONG TIME. THE MORE I GOT TO KNOW YOU, THE MORE DISTANT ALL OF YOUR AWFUL ADMISSIONS BECAME, BECAUSE HOW COULD YOU EVEN BE REMOTLY CLOSE TO THE PERSON YOU HINTED AT BEING?  
Karkat: DAVE, I KNOW YOU. I KNOW WHAT KIND OF PERSON YOU ARE.  
Karkat: BUT NOW I FEEL LIKE I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.

So this is what a broken heart felt like. The illusion had been torn open and the real world came pouring out. The sinking feeling was identical to the way Dave had felt the first time he’d realized Dirk wasn’t coming back, that dull, unfocused emptiness radiating out from his soul.

Dave: i wish i could be the person you think i am  
Dave: but i dont think thats possible anymore. i never lied to you, for what little its worth  
Karkat: I KNOW. THANK YOU FOR THAT. ITS WORTH MORE THAN YOU THINK.  
Dave: ill try to keep in touch with you tomorrow, okay?  
Karkat: ALRIGHT. I’LL HOLD YOU TO THAT PROMISE. GOODNIGHT, DAVE.  
Dave: night karkat

Dave held his phone until the brightly lit screen went dark with inactivity. Karkat didn’t text him back. Dave felt like he was rotting in place, decomposing into his mattress. His eyes drifted shut again, and this time he resolved not to open them for anything short of the return of Jesus. 

Then he heard footsteps down the hall. The gentle footfalls came to a stop outside of his door, and Dave held his breath only to let it hiss out again in annoyance when the knock sounded through the room. 

“Kid,” Slick called out softly, questioning. “You still awake?”

“No,” Dave groaned out an answer, mashing his face into the blankets so that his voice was muffled. “Fuck off.”

“Kid,” Slick opened the door anyway, ignoring his dramatic attempt to remain isolated. He looked like he was going to say something else, but then he got sidetracked. “Are you still wearing those fucking sunglasses?”

“Yeah?” Dave said hoarsely. “So?”

Agent Slick sighed. “Kid, its dark outside and you’re actively in bed trying to sleep.”

“I don’t know, Slick,” Dave said, rolling over to face him. “It’s kinda hard to sleep with federal marshals up my ass.”

“Is that really the best comeback you’ve got?” Slick asked wryly. “That’s not even fucking clever.”

Dave gritted his teeth. He was just so tired. “Fuck. Off.” The agent made no move to leave, so at last Dave gave up the hope of sleep and sat up. “What the fuck do you want?”

The only sliver of light came from the ajar door and the weak moonlight that cast itself across his bed in slats from the blinds, and with the added bonus of his shades Dave couldn’t really make out much of the fed’s expression with Slick back-lit like that, leaning against the door frame with one shoulder as he crossed his arms.

“Show me your hands,” Slick said.

Confused, Dave clenched his fingers into fists, refusing to comply simply on principle. He couldn’t help but goad the cop on a tad to cover up his sudden discomfort. “What?” He mocked. “You gonna arrest me after all?”

“No one’s arresting you Dave,” Slick sighed, exasperated.

“Why not?” Dave asked, partly serious. “I’m guilty, aren’t I? Or do you prefer my confession signed?”

“You’re a minor,” Slick reminded him. “Your confession isn’t legally valid without either a lawyer or your legal guardian present.”

“I thought you were my de-facto legal guardian?” Dave pointed out, just to be stubborn. 

“Well, as your legal guardian and also a law enforcement officer, I’ve decided not to arrest you,” Slick told him. 

Dave pulled the blankets up to his chin, hunching down. “Why not?” He hated how small his voice sounded. 

“Dave,” Slick said, and his voice was careful. “I don’t think that you understand that you’ve done nothing wrong.”

Dave snorted and it was a thin, miserable sound. He bundled himself up tighter in his blanket burrito, trying in vain to warm up. “I’ve done everything wrong. People are dead because of me.”

Slick came closer. He didn’t approach the bed. instead he drifted over to the window and peeked at the sliver of moon outside. “You know,” he said. “People are dead because of me too.”

Dave sat up straighter, listening closely. 

“Show me your hands,” Slick said again, and this time Dave obeyed.

He held out both of his hands, his skin pale in the faint moonlight. They were still and calm, the shake in them gone with the exhaustion he felt, the fingernails bitten down to nubs. 

Slick leaned closer, peering at them intently before he frowned like his worst suspicion had been confirmed.

“What?” Dave asked defensively. 

“It’s such a small scar,” Slick said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t even really stand out against all the rest of them.”

Dave’s eyes were drawn to the scar he knew Slick meant. The thin line was almost invisible against his pale skin from where Bro had pinned him to the table. 

“Turn your hands over,” Slick instructed, and Dave numbly followed the order, palms-up. When held like this both halves of the same wound lined up perfectly, obscuring the exit wound from the puncture where he’d been pierced. 

Dave knew Slick must have seen this scar multiple times, but this was the first time he’d asked about it. “What happened there?”

Dave shrugged. “I tried to block a sword hit with my hands,” he said emotionlessly. “It didn’t work out too well.”

Slick’s lips were a thin line. He didn’t ask for details. “Every scar you’ve got have a story like that behind it?”

“Mostly,” Dave admitted. “Some are worse than others.”

“Damn,” Slick said, cursing, then, “Dave, I saw your medical file from the day you escaped. I know how bad it was.” Dave listened expressionless as Slick counted off on his fingers, listing the damage. “Your shoulder, your fucking legs, the head wound—all of it. Even the old breaks that showed up on x-ray.”

Dave swallowed. His mouth was painfully dry. “So?”

“So you were fighting for your life,” Slick told him intently. “Every goddamn day you were fighting for your life and you did what you needed to do to survive, to escape, to_ get the hell out of there_! And what was the very first thing you did with freedom?” Slick barked out a hoarse laugh. “You walked yourself to the police station on bleeding legs to turn that bastard in.”

Dave didn’t say anything. His lungs felt restricted. His throat was tight. 

“It’s because of you that we have half a fighting chance to stop Strider,” Slick said. “If you hadn’t survived for as long as you did, if you hadn’t been brave and strong enough to escape when you did, fuck it, Dave, I’m fairly certain the city wouldn’t have a single clue that a serial killer was operating right under their fucking noses. He’d still be out there, freely killing people. But he’s not, because you stopped him. _You_ stopped it._ You did that_.”

Dave forced himself to speak. “Does it really matter?” He asked. “I’ve always done more harm than good.”

“Because you played his picture game for as long as you did?” Slick asked, shaking his head. “Dave, you kept that fucker _contained_. You kept a lid on his homicidal rampage and made certain that he affected as few people as possible. You’re a smoke jumper to a forest fire no one knew was burning. I don’t think we’ll ever truly know the amount of good you did, the number of people you’ve saved.”

Dave focused very hard on staring at nothing, his hands in fists. 

“I’ve worked with a lot of bad guys,” Slick said. “I’ve worked with a lot of good guys too, but I don’t think I’ve ever worked with someone I’d call a hero before.”

“Don’t,” Dave choked out. “I’m not a goddamn hero.”

“Dave,” Slick told him, willing him to see it. “I don’t think you understand just how much good you’ve done, but I see it. I can see that light shining in you. It’s so fucking bright. Not even your Bro could stomp it out.” Slick gazed at him, his single eye glittering as he turned back towards the door. His final words drifted back to Dave like a breath of wind. “I just hope you learn to find it in yourself to let go of the things you couldn’t change.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of individual feelings for this chapter as we dive deeper into what's actually going on. The structure of Dave's character is still developing as he grows throughout the story, and part of growing up is learning to move forward after life yanks the rug out from under your feet. There's this constant back and forth of the true consequences of Dave's actions, good or bad as they may be. And a deeper look into the psyche of a killer, about what motivated Bro to do what he did and how Dave handled that kind of abuse while growing up. How Spades Slick sees Dave, how Karkat sees Dave, and how Dave views himself are all at odds with each other and its an interesting dynamic to watch what kind of character he'll become, to see which version of himself he chooses to grow into. 
> 
> Thoughts? Feel free to scream at me via our HS writer's discord chat! I'm always up for a talk <3


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEW CHAPTER IS COMING IN HOT!!!!!!!!!!

Dave stayed inside and stewed over the thousands of online profiles that Clubs Deuce assembled for him until Sunday evening. By that point if Dave stayed inside and looked at a computer screen for another three seconds he’d fucking lose it. It had gotten to where Dave wasn’t even sure if he’d recognize one of the potential victims even if he stumbled across their page. Everything was starting to blur together. 

Dave leaned dangerously far back in the kitchen chair, balancing on two legs, wobbling just enough to get his adrenaline going to shake the stiffness out of his limbs. “Slick,” he loudly complained at where the fed was seated at the counter. “I need a break.”

The agent didn’t even look up at him. “Then fucking take one,” he said. 

“I don’t want to,” Dave said stubbornly, then, “Drive me to Karkat’s then. That counts as a break, right?”

Slick didn’t even have to think about it. “No,” he growled out, still not looking up. “Too dangerous.”

Dave rolled his eyes behind his shades even though he knew his handler couldn’t see. “Then give me a panic button or something. That way you’ll know if I ever need help.”

Slick huffed, at last wryly glancing up. “Does that mean you’ll actually agree to wear a panic button if I get you one?”

“I make no promises,” Dave warned. “But maybe.” Then he grinned evilly. “Or you could let me carry a huge-ass knife or some shit. That way I could protect myself.”

Slick snorted, incredulous. “No fuckin’ way,” he said, trying not to laugh at the ridiculous suggestion. “The very last thing I’m going to do is arm you, what the fuck kid?”

Dave shrugged, half joking, half serious. “I do know how to handle myself in a fight,” he reminded the fed. “Probably better than you do.”

Slick ignored the slight challenge, closing his laptop to rub at the space around his eyepatch. “I’m not worried you’ll fuck around and stab yourself by mistake,” he admitted. “But like hell am I letting someone as jumpy and twitchy as you go around with any sort of blade.”

“Not even for protection?” Dave prodded at the boundaries of what Slick would do to keep him safe out of curiosity and boredom. In a way he was glad that the fed was so insistent about him staying weaponless. If Dave never had to hold a sword again, he’d die happy. 

“Not even then,” Slick confirmed. “Besides,” he said. “If it ever gets to the point that you actively need a knife to defend yourself, its too late.”

Dave nodded along with the fed, cheerfully joking about his own demise. “RIP me,” he deadpanned. “Dump my body in the nearest ditch and call it a day.”

He meant it as a joke, partly to keep away the very real truth that if he ever needed a knife to defend himself from Bro, he didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving. For all the times he’d fought back against Bro, he’d never once won.

For some reason though, Slick seemed uncomfortable by Dave’s answer. “You know,” he said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t throw you in a ditch somewhere if worst comes to worst. You’ll get a proper burial out of me. No shortcuts either.” He held up a hand, vowing it. “I’ll even bribe the undertaker to take extra good care of your headstone.”

Dave laughed. “Aw,” he said, disappointed. “But if you lay me to rest properly, how can I justify my righteous haunting of your ass from the afterlife? Don’t you want the ethereal spirit of my presence to bother you forever?”

Slick merely grunted and turned away. “I’ve already got people haunting me,” he said. “I don’t need the weight of more souls on my conscience.”

Dave shut up after that, foot lodged so deep in his mouth that he couldn’t speak around it for a few seconds. It wasn’t hard to imagine that was the truth, and Dave wondered how many people before him Slick had been ordered to protect, and how many of them he’d let down.

“So your annoying ass is staying good and alive,” Slick told him sternly. “No knives either. I’m not tempting fate any more than I have to.” He paused, considering Dave from his seat at the counter. “Also, I think I’ll take you up on that panic button suggestion. I’ll have Clubs look into it.”

“Fine, I’ll wear your panic button,” Dave said, negotiating with all the skills of a YouTube comment moderator. “But you have to drive me over to Karkat’s house.”

“Give me one good reason why I should,” Slick asked smugly, opening his laptop again, secure in his victory. “From now on, it’s either here or at school only. No exceptions.”

Dave brought out the big guns, shameless in his pursuit of seeing Karkat again. “Because I might have kissed him Wednesday before my life was ruined.”

Slick went very still, fixing Dave in place with a look of shock. He quickly composed himself though, settling into a careful apathy. “Good thing I don’t have a bleedin’ heart, then. You’re staying here. I’m not putting your safety at the whims of your teenage hormones.”

Dave pushed harder. “I also might have told him I loved him.”

Slick’s lips disappeared into a thin, hard line. He looked overwrought, but when he let out a pained sigh Dave knew he’d won. “Fine,” Slick broke, nearly growling, but there was a small part of him beaming with pride that he was actively trying to hide. “Go get in the fucking car.”

Dave nearly skipped outside, eager to get gone as he texted Karkat.

Dave: eta like eight minutes  
Dave: you have one giant ass shitload of egotastical persona coming in hot

Karkat answered back in an instant.

Karkat: EGOTASTICAL ISN’T A WORD, DUMBASS.  
Karkat: DOES THIS SPECTACULARLY OBTUSE AND GENERALLY CONFUSING STRING OF WORDS REFER TO THE FACT THAT YOU’RE ON YOUR WAY OVER?  
Dave: hell yeah  
Dave: i finally got slick to unchain me from the dungeon of his overprotective tendancies and borderline neurotic watchdogness. im pretty sure the guy sleeps with a hunting knife tucked lovingly under his pillow like something out of a shitty two-bit action movie directed by college film majors trying to be both edgy and original but instead landing firmly in the hashtag tropey bullshit area of bad characterization

Slick started the car. The sun was still up and shadows stretched their twiggy hands across the gravel and dirt driveway, cutting strips out of the ground from the pine trees across the road. The sunset was out in full-force, painting the sky red and orange-amber. Dave looked away. The mix of colors bothered him.

Karkat: YOU SOUND LIKE YOU’RE EITHER IN A GOOD MOOD OR TRYING TOO HARD TO HIDE THE FACT THAT YOU FEEL MISERABLE.  
Dave: how so?  
Karkat: THE DEGREE AND LENGTH OF YOUR METAPHORS ARE DIRECTLY RELATED TO HOW YOU’RE FEELING. I NOTICED THE TREND WEEKS AGO.

A part of Dave was secretly touched that Karkat had apparently noticed an idiosyncrasy unique to him, but another part was slightly off-put by how transparent his emotions were. Shit, what happened to his poker face? Still, he had to test the waters. He had no idea where he stood with Karkat now. What did one short press of the lips mean when weighted against what Karkat must now think of him?

Dave: why shouldnt i be in a good mood? im coming to see you arent i? 

He must have pushed too far because Karkat didn’t text him back, and now Dave’s belly was a mess of snakes and roiling with nausea. He’d fucked up. 

Slick pulled silently into Karkat’s clean cut neighborhood. “Ground rules,” the fed said, his fingers tapping at the steering wheel. “I know this kid’s not a fucking idiot. I know he’s probably put some things together on his own and asking you to lie to him is not only shitty but impossible, but please, for the love of fuck, don’t give away any secrets that might get somebody killed. Remember, there’s still a case we’re building and a lot of people I trust are currently engaging in some very dangerous activities trying to hunt Strider down. I won’t have you endanger them by flapping your gums to your crush.”

“Got it,” Dave agreed distractedly. “No spilling state secrets. There’ll be no treason out of me today, Mr. scary cop sir. Please don’t lock my ass up in ole’ Guantanamo. I swear it was only a little nuclear launch code that I smuggled into enemy hands.”

Slick shot him a sideways look, bemused. “Feeling nervous there, Dave?” He asked knowingly. “Butterflies in your belly?”

“More like tactical missiles,” Dave muttered, embarrassed. 

“You talked to him any since shit hit the fan?” Slick asked.

Dave gulped. “Not really,” he answered, feeling evasive. 

Slick pulled into Karkat’s driveway. The sunset had begun to die, the colors darkening into the night sky as the car idled. “Dave,” Slick said, his voice serious. “I’ll give you two hours. Feel free to call me any time before that though and I’ll come pick you up straight away.”

“Got it,” Dave said, feeling sick all over again at the prospect of the upcoming confrontation. He fiddled with his seatbelt, read to get this started.

“And Dave,” Slick called out as he opened up the car door, ready to leave. “Be careful. Follow your heart and remember that you don’t always need to see eye to eye with someone to understand their point of view.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Dave asked nervously. 

Slick shrugged his shoulders, staring straight ahead. “All of us old folks remember being young and in love,” he said, and that was rich coming from someone who had to be under forty. “It’s hard as shit even without all the extra bullshit you’re dealing with. I just want you to be happy, kid.”

Dave’s throat felt tight at that. No one had ever considered his happiness before, and hearing the out-loud confirmation that Slick actually cared about him being happy did funny things to Dave’s chest. He didn’t know how to respond to that without seeming like he cared or felt touched by the consideration, so he just shrugged and said, “I’ll try.”

Dave stood in the driveway and watched as Slick’s car vanished down the road. That strange feeling in his chest didn’t go away though. Instead it buried itself deeper, nestling itself between his ribs to remind him that maybe things will turn out alright after all.

He walked up the driveway to politely knock on the front door. The sound echoed. It took nearly a full sixty seconds for Dave to hear the bolt lock being thrown open and the door was yanked back. Karkat stood there, his eyes taking in Dave’s slouched posture, his hands in his pockets, chin downturned like he was waiting for the condemnation to fall and the door to swing shut in his face. Instead Karkat threw himself forward, hands on Dave’s shoulders as he looked all over Dave as if checking to make sure he was in one piece before crushing him in a hug. 

Dave didn’t really react well to the sudden lack of personal space. He flinched back, tensing all over as Karkat’s arms surrounded him with gentle pressure. Karkat was speaking though, comforting words as he pressed his face against Dave’s chest. “Oh my god, I thought I’d never see you again. You’re okay, right?”

The worry in Karkat’s voice made a knot form in the back of Dave’s throat as he considered the question, slowly relaxing, accepting the embrace for what it was as he leaned into the other boy, head bowed to answer in a quiet murmur. “I’m fine, for now.”

The for now seemed to remind Karkat that the last time they’d seen each other, Dave had completely lost his shit in the most uncool way possible. His street cred was ash by now. Karkat pulled away just to glare at him, his eyes red and hot and angry. “Inside,” he ordered, heralding Dave towards the open door. 

Dave surrendered without a fight, drifting through the doorway. Karkat locked it behind him, moving on automatic. The only expression Dave could read on the werewolf’s face was anger, and Karkat’s shoulders were a rigid line.

So it was going to be like this then. Dave had dared hope just for a moment in Karkat’s arms that things wouldn’t be like this, that somehow through some miracle Karkat wouldn’t hate him. 

Dave knew what to do. He crossed into the familiar living room and took a seat on the couch they’d once shared. Karkat carefully sat down at the other side, as far away as possible. The distance between them spoke volumes. 

Dave didn’t say anything. He waited for Karkat to break the silence because he was a coward at heart.

“So,” Karkat began, not looking at him. His hands were folded in his lap, the fingers interlaced. When the question came, it was from a different direction than what Dave had expected but every bit as damning. “Your last name is Strider?”

Dave closed his eyes. The media still didn’t know that he existed. This wasn’t some crazy theory Karkat had found lurking in weird-ass chatrooms. This was the direct result of pieces of the truth Dave had never said out loud but Karkat had still seen etched between his scars and the way he flinched back at loud noises, the point driven home in orange spray paint that read, lil’ bro. The logical leap was one that the media still hadn’t made. Karkat was just that fucking sharp. Or maybe Dave was just that readable. 

“Dave?” Karkat asked again, slightly hesitant, and Dave realized he’d been staring at nothing with his eyes closed for over a minute because for all that Karkat must know by now, Dave had never admitted anything and this specific question was the downfall of all Dave’s misplaced hopes.

He forced himself to speak, and it wasn’t nearly as hard as he thought it would be to answer. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “It feels good as shit to admit that too. I missed my last name. Rest in fucking pieces Jackson Lalonde and his piece of shit name. At least now I can be me again.” He’d said too much, he was aware of that, but damn it felt good to hear his real name out of Karkat’s mouth.

“Dave Strider,” Karkat said, testing it aloud. He nodded to himself like he approved of the name and Dave felt his heartbeat flutter. “So the Strider on the news is…” he trailed off, waiting for Dave to answer. 

“Bro,” Dave admitted. “Don’t know the fucker’s real name, I only ever knew him as Bro.”

Karkat nodded again as more pieces of the puzzle snapped together. “And he’s?”

“Like, my dad, I guess?” Dave said, sounding it out. That part he’d always been uncertain of. There’d never been any hint of a mother of any kind and Bro had zero notable contact with any physical other people that weren’t his online darkweb buddies. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to imagine that Bro had straight up kidnapped him or something if it hadn’t been for Dirk, who years younger looked just fucking like the bastard right down to the yellow-orange citrine eyes and sharp jawline. There was no shortage of familiar resemblance there, so Dave had to admit it even as loathe to the idea as he was. Bro was his father even if Dave’s unfortunate genetics spared him from looking like the man. “He raised me. Took care of me. Even beat the shit out of me in-between his constant murder sprees.” 

Karkat didn’t react much to that bombshell, so Dave had to ask. “How much of that had you guessed?”

“Most of it,” Karkat admitted, fingers nervously clenching. His knuckles were pale. “The family part at least. Also the… other stuff,” he ended lamely. 

Dave raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t push his luck. Part of him didn’t want Karkat to know he’d been a soundboard for creative, unique tortures even though the proof of it was stamped all over his body. 

But then Karkat had to ruin it all. “Did… did you know? About the murders?”

Karkat still wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were resolutely fixed on his lap. 

“Karkat,” Dave said, and Karkat still didn’t look at him. “Karkat, look at me.”

At last Karkat looked up and Dave could read the hope written there, see the false narrative Karkat had created in his mind, clinging to the scenario where Dave hadn’t even known what was going on and had run to the police as soon as he found out. 

That was when Dave felt his heart break, because even now Karkat thought he was a good person. 

“Karkat,” Dave said again, and the other boy’s lips were trembling as Dave held his gaze. “He made me help.”

Karkat’s face fractured as he hissed in his breath, but he didn’t fight it. He didn’t argue. He just accepted it and that part nearly hurt worse than knowing that Karkat knew the truth.

For some reason Dave kept talking, attempting to explain away a bit of his guilt. “Slick knows all the rotten details. He’s still trying to build a case against Bro even though the cops already have more than enough information to damn him forever even without my help. Bro’s still put there looking for me, as his most recent message and body confirms. He’ll stop at nothing until I’m dead for betraying him.”

“How’d you betray him?” Karkat asked sadly, his voice a whisper.

Dave shrugged. “I turned him in.”

“Why?”

And there it was, the question that still haunted him. “Because he was going to kill me. Because he needed to be stopped. Because I want him dead. Take your pick—they’re all fucking true.”

Suddenly the whole story was spilling out of him, maybe not all the gristly details but the important parts for sure. The pictures. Bro’s locked computer with all of its unreachable answers. The Midnight Crew’s stubborn, gruff determination. Dave’s face plastered across the darkweb for creeps to watch as his blood spilled. The room at the back of the apartment that always smelled too much like death and bleach. Red dust caked on Bro’s boots after he’d fucked off with the newest body, the ringing clash of swords and knives and the unforgettable feeling of his bones splintering. Spades Slick’s bullheaded insistence that Dave was a hero against all odds. That fateful graffiti message and the threat it represented, the timeline hanging above Dave’s head and his utter ineptitude when it came to fixing things before anyone else got hurt. 

He turned to face Karkat, still respecting the distance between them as the words poured out of him. “I ran less than a year ago, but that doesn’t even matter because it still took too goddamn long for me to leave. And what did I even gain from it? A target on my back and more bodies to my name? The cops didn’t even fucking catch him when I handed that fucker over to them on a silver platter. He _still _got away. He’s _still_ killing people. I’m _still _not free of him…” Dave trailed off, his voice shaking. He couldn’t help but curl up on the soft couch, knees pressed against his chest in a bid to protect his abdomen. He’d done the right thing for the wrong reasons and the foul core of his hasty decision was still biting him in the ass. He’d built his life here on a crumbling foundation and now the roof was caving in under the weight of what he’d done. 

“Dave, hey,” Karkat said, drawing Dave back out of his head. “Don’t think like that. That’s how they win,” he said, because somehow Karkat still didn’t hate him after hearing all of that and the knowledge was blocking out any other thoughts Dave might have like a scratch on a record player.

“You… you don’t hate me?” Dave asked, confused. 

Karkat didn’t answer outright; he was still stuck on his previous statement. “You can’t let yourself think like that.”

“I don’t know how else to think,” Dave admitted hoarsely. “It’s like I’m stuck in some shitty Mobius ring of bad choices where everything’s connected and always wraps around to get me in the end. Bro won’t ever let me go. To him I’ve done the unforgivable. He can’t let me live.”

“I know what it feels like to be hunted,” Karkat told him, grimacing, his fingers clenching against the knees of his jeans. “I’m not like you, Dave, but I know I never made a bad decision. I know I didn’t fuck up, but what’s the use of clinging to fake innocence when the end result is the same? I still killed my classmates. I’m still guilty. I’m still being stalked by the wolf that did this to me. I…” He trailed off, then looked right at Dave. “I know what it’s like to be haunted by the things you couldn’t change.”

Goddamn, they were so alike. Sometimes Dave had to remind himself that Karkat was probably the only other person who understood what it’s like to fight every damn day and still wake up with bloody hands.

“But how do you live with it?” Dave asked miserably. “How do you forgive yourself?”

Karkat patted the couch beside him. “Come here.” Dave didn’t move, and Karkat rolled his eyes and huffed. “You heard me, get your ass over here and I’ll show you how.”

Driven by curiosity, Dave cautiously crept closer until Karkat slumped towards him, and then suddenly they were side-by-side. Dave went very still at the contact, his heart pounding faster in his chest. Karkat was very warm at his side, thawing Dave’s frozen skin. He had to hold back a shudder as Karkat drug a thick blanket off the back of the couch to drape over them, and when he touched Dave it wasn’t with any more hesitance than he’d already shown in the past, that exact right mixture of patience and want that broke right through all of Dave’s walls. 

“I know you’ve been hurt,” Karkat began, and he reached for Dave’s numb hands and grasped it tightly, watching how the scars shifted across his knuckles. “And I know I can never understand what that was like for you. Fuck, I don’t even begin to approach knowing what to say or do or how to act, so I’ll just keep being myself around you and praying that’s enough. That _I’m_ enough.”

Dave didn’t even dare to fucking breathe.

“But I do know this,” Karkat said, and he leaned closer, his head fitting itself on top of Dave’s shoulder like it was made for it. “I know I can never hate you, Dave, and I know that you don’t deserve to be hated. I know that you don’t deserve any of the bullshit you’re going through and I know it’s a goddamn miracle that you’re even fucking alive right now and I am so, so happy that I got the chance to meet you, so this is how to forgive yourself,” Karkat said, clutching Dave’s hand, his words ghosting themselves across Dave’s skin, and he was as mad as Dave was numb. “This is how you start, this right here. You accept that some things are out of your reach and that you did the absolute best that you could, and in the end you say ‘fuck it, and fuck you’ and you decide that you deserve to be happy. Because when the universe hands you shit you’ve got to stand up and say ‘this is my fucking life now, and it’s the only one I’m getting, and I’ll be damned if I let someone or something else ruin it for me.’ You’ve gotta start living for you. That’s how you start to forgive yourself, in a series of little steps that make it easier to go on. You accept the past and learn from it. You never repeat it. And you force the future to bend to your will because you refuse to accept it any other way, but first, you start by being happy because that’s the single biggest **fuck you** that you can give Bro.”

Dave didn’t even think he remembered how to breathe. Could he be happy? Was that even possible? Did he deserve it? Before he could second-guess himself Dave raised their interlinked fingers to his face and pressed his lips against the back of Karkat’s hand and held it there. Karkat shifted against him, picking his head up from Dave’s shoulder to look at him across the scarce few inches that separated them. 

A thousand unsaid words cluttered the air between them, burning white-hot as Dave stared into Karkat’s face. Those beautiful red eyes considered him, pupils dilated as Karkat’s hand moved to hold his jaw, fingers splayed against his skin.

“Fuck it,” Karkat said angrily, and then they were kissing. 

Everything inside of Dave melted at once, molding himself to Karkat’s lips as his breath left him in a gasp. He mirrored Karkat, one hand gripping his jaw, the other laying open against Karkat’s chest to feel his heart beating strongly beneath his palm. 

His actions caught up to him a second later. “Shit,” Dave panted, leaning away. His voice was shaking. “Holy shit, Karkat, I—”

“Do you want me to stop?” Karkat asked, and his eyes were absolutely smoldering.

“God, no,” Dave said, and he kissed Karkat again as his friend smiled against his lips and drug his fingers through the short hair on Dave’s head, every move deliciously warm and slow. 

“You,” Karkat interrupted, still kissing him. “You said that you loved me.”

“I did,” Dave didn’t even hesitate to admit it. “I don’t regret it either.”

“When did you know?” Karkat asked, pulling back to gaze at him.

Dave spoke from the heart. “That night I stayed over during the full moon, after you changed back. I was suspicious when you asked me to stay with you, and I knew I shouldn’t but I wasn’t strong enough to leave you then. We fell asleep on the couch together and I remember waking up sometime during the night in your arms and that was the first time I’d ever felt safe.” The memory jumped unbidden into his mind, the sleepy weight of his head pillowed on Karkat’s chest, listening to the gentle sound of his breathing. “That’s when I knew. That’s the instant I knew I loved you and that knowledge has been haunting me ever since.”

To Dave’s surprise, Karkat let out a short, breathless laugh. “Holy shit,” he said, incredulous. “I remember that. I remember begging you to stay with me.”

“And I did,” Dave said, and he wrapped his arms around Karkat just to hold him.

“You did,” Karkat agreed, his fingers meeting behind Dave’s neck. They were wound around each other now, sharing space. “That’s when I knew I loved you. That’s when I knew I could trust you completely, that I’d never scare you away. That’s when I let myself love you, because I knew you’d be there for me no matter what.”

Dave dropped his head down, shoulders shaking, Karkat’s words boring into him with unbearable sweetness. 

“Hey,” Karkat said, prompting Dave to meet his suddenly shy gaze. “It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

“We’ll be okay,” Dave repeated, and for the first time in his life he believed it, and he spent the rest of the time Slick had given him with Karkat on the couch as the almost-full moon rose outside, the words _‘we’ll be okay, we’ll be okay,’_ playing on repeat in his mind, trading gentle kisses and pretending that the rest of the world didn’t exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God I love this chapter. I love it so much. Can you feel it? They're slowly getting there. Healing takes time but it is possible <3
> 
> The right to happiness in the face of past sins is such a core aspect of this story and I'm glad that it's getting explored. But It's true-- Everyone deserves a second chance. Everyone deserves forgiveness.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter new chapter new chapter new chapter new chapter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Somehow, it was Monday. Time was funny like that. The next day always came regardless, marching on and on no matter what Dave did. It was like he was trapped in an hourglass that had already run out, his feet in the sand, empty space above his head, unsure of what he was even trying to count down to. 

The full moon was also tonight, which meant that Karkat wasn’t in school today. Without Karkat there and a timeline hanging over Dave’s head, he wondered why school was still a thing anyway. He guessed that sometimes he learned stuff, but was a handful of spare tidbits really worth time that he could have spent at the safe house trying to track down Bro’s next victim? According to Slick, yes, but Slick had different motivations that bordered simply keeping Dave out of the house for a few hours and forcing him into having normal human interactions. The overprotective, worrisome asshole. Dave almost wished he could make this easier on the guy, but he didn’t know how. He still didn’t know how to make the murders go away. He didn’t know how to stop Bro. He still couldn’t wash the blood off his hands. 

But he could pass advanced Algebra, so maybe he wasn’t completely useless. Maybe Slick was on to something after all. 

School passed quickly until lunch, where Dave sat alone in the front office beside Karkat’s conspicuously empty seat. His food was tasteless on his tongue. Officer Johnson tried to talk to him, small talk, comradely shooting the shit, but the guy had no idea about what was happening and was under the impression that nothing at all had changed in the last few weeks. It just made Dave that more aware of the fact that he was ever increasingly living in a world no one else could ever be a part of. The empty seat at his side burned, the one exception to that rule absent due to foreseen but unavoidable circumstance. Dave could no more stop the full moon from rising than he could find out where Bro was hiding. He was getting sick of working within rules invented by someone else.

It was after school when he received the text. The number was unfamiliar. The sun had finished setting over an hour ago and Slick was moping about in the overgrown backyard somewhere with a flashlight, cursing about blocked lines of vision and unreliable surveillance tech. Dave stared at the text with trepidation. It was vague enough to have been from a wrong number but his name stood out like some damning banner. 

(unknown): Dave, I hope that I’m not texting you too late at night but I’m currently working under some very peculiar orders. 

Whoever this was, it certainly wasn’t Bro. The wording was all wrong. Too few taunting threats of death and dismemberment. But it could have been from someone working for him. Dave considered calling Slick back from his outside tinkering, but decided to do a little investigating of his own first.

Dave: whos orders

The answer came immediately.

(unknown): Karkat’s. 

That didn’t really clear things up, but it did make him curious. And cautious. With the moon hanging heavy in the sky, overripe and bloated as a blind eyeball, Karkat was locked in the basement of his extremely fortified house and unable to text anyone. Karkat currently couldn’t give anyone orders, but if Bro knew enough about Dave’s life here to know and bait him with Karkat’s name then he’d already lost. There was a thing with cellphones, right? A tracking thing. Stay on the line for more than thirty seconds and they had you? Was there something similar for texts?

Dave: who is this?

He texted them back because his dumbassery was alive and well. He had enough things to fear without adding unknown texters to the list. 

(unknown): Oh, this is Karkat’s dad speaking. I didn’t realize you didn’t have my number.

Dave squinted at his phone. The answer seemed too convenient to be real.

Dave: prove it  
(unknown): Really? Prove it’s me? Doesn’t that seem a little extreme to you? Not to mention unnecessary.  
Dave: dont avoid the fucking question. blocking in ten nine eight  
Dave: seven  
Dave: five  
(unknown): You skipped six.  
Dave: fuck you.  
Dave: three  
(unknown): Alright, alright! I knew you could be paranoid but I had no idea it was this pronounced.  
(unknown): When I came back from California I walked in on you and Karkat tangled together on the couch in the living room. My son was still passed out from his transformation but you were awake. I still haven’t brought up that incident with Karkat because I don’t want to embarrass him. I’m not sure how much of that night he remembers, but I’ll never forget the sight of the two of you together. It gave me hope that maybe things would be for the better. 

It was a scene only Karkat’s dad would know but that didn’t make Dave feel any better about having this conversation. Why would Mr. Vantas be contacting him? What orders? 

Dave: ok ill bite. its you  
Dave: respectfully, why the fuck are you texting me? is something wrong with karkat?  
Mr. Vantas: Not at all. He just wanted me to remind you not to freak out during his absence.  
Dave: thats weird whyd he think i would freak out its not like the full moon snuck up on me or anything its kinda on a schedule and everything  
Dave: last thing we need is the lunar cycle to go off the shits  
Dave: full moon rising without sense or warning like five times a fucking week then it up and vanishes for the rest of the month like some kind of spree flasher getting their fix then dodging before the cops catch on oh my god the moon really is a flasher we just dont notice because its stripping so slowly as the nights pass by until its whole ass is bared to the entire goddamn world  
Dave: ive cracked the code  
Dave: wake up america the moons a fucking stripper  
Mr. Vantas: What in the Goddamn hell are you talking about?  
Dave: the moons a stripper didnt i make that stellar observation obvious?  
Mr. Vantas: I’m not having this conversation with you. I’ve said my part and I’ll be off now. Goodnight, Dave.  
Dave: wait  
Dave: hold on  
Dave: in the spirit of not shitting with you can i ask a honest to god question real quick  
Mr. Vantas: The way you’ve phrased that question makes me worried about what you’re going to tell me. Can I opt out of this?  
Dave: no  
Dave: were in the SHIT now  
Dave: you and me are the only people in the world whove realized the truth about the moon turning tricks once a month to pay rent  
Dave: this makes us closer than brothers  
Dave: blood brothers even  
Dave: together we must spread the truth  
Mr. Vantas: GOODNIGHT!  
Dave: ok ok ill stop i did actually have a question hiding underneath all of that bullshit i just typed and if youd let me carry that long winded metaphor out to its natural conclusion the topic at hand would have eventually risen to the top like cream in milk between vivid imagery of the moon in lingerie and allegories about the working class  
Dave: you gotta learn how to go with the fucking flow dude  
Mr. Vantas: Do you speak to my son like this?  
Dave: oh no never  
Dave: with him its much worse  
Mr. Vantas: I can’t imagine. What’s your question?  
Dave: how much do you now about whats going on?

There was a long pause between the responses. Dave stared at the screen the entire time, squinting against the glare. 

When the answer came, it was lackluster.

Mr. Vantas: With you, I assume?  
Dave: sure

Another long pause. Dave was starting to feel nervous. 

Mr. Vantas: Before Karkat met you I was certain that I knew everything about him. He only started keeping secrets when he began hanging out around you and I’m certain he’s hiding things to protect you. I know you’re with Witness Protection. I know you come from a dark place. But I also know that my son trusts you enough to keep the dirty details out of my sight so whatever it is that’s going on with you, I don’t really want to know.  
Mr. Vantas: Keep your secrets, Dave. I won’t pry. It’s not my business to poke around and I do actually trust my son enough to let him make his own decisions about you because I can’t help but trust you as well.  
Dave: you trust me?  
Dave: why?

It was such an odd thought, someone else trusting him enough to not want to scrape clean the inside of his skull and ponder over whatever skim they collected. Slick was alright most of the time and he was getting better, but the fed still looked at Dave sometimes like Dave was a puzzle to pull apart and dissect until the right answers presented themselves, like Dave was a riddle he couldn’t quite solve.

Mr. Vantas: Dave, you saved my son’s life, at great danger to your own I might add. Whatever else is going on with you, whatever is happening that you’re so worried about me knowing—It won’t erase the fact that you saved Karkat.  
Mr. Vantas: You’ve got a good heart Dave. Karkat sees it and I do too. So yes, I trust you.  
Mr. Vantas: And if you ever make me regret that trust… lets just say that I know a lot of good places to hide a body.  
Dave: oh wow is this the shovel talk youre giving me right now or just an average everyday death threat?  
Mr. Vantas: One of the things about you that Karkat didn’t keep a secret is that fact that the two of you spend hours making out on my living room couch. I’ll strive to keep a closer eye on the pair of you in the future. I guess I can’t leave you two alone unsupervised anymore.  
Dave: wait wait let me guess ‘don’t break his heart or ill kill you’ right? right?  
Dave: am i getting warmer at least?  
Dave: goddamn the anticipation just keeps building  
Mr. Vantas: I just don’t want Karkat to get hurt. He’s been through too much to deserve that. I’m just asking you to treat him well.  
Mr. Vantas: Or I’ll get the shovel.  
Dave: oh my god yes thank you so much this is perfect  
Dave: an honest to god shovel talk  
Dave: another cultural milestone to mark off my list  
Mr. Vantas: You are so fucking weird. I can kinda see why my son likes you so much.  
Dave: thank you karkats dad thats the nicest death threat ive ever received  
Dave: ill fuckin cherish that shit for forever  
Mr. Vantas: Alright, have a nice night Dave.  
Dave: ok ok but can you do me one more favor first?  
Mr. Vantas: What?  
Dave: forget this number. no one else is supposed to have it and its dangerous for you to know it  
Dave: plus slick will flip his shit if he finds out you got ahold of it  
Mr. Vantas: Will do.

There were no further texts that night or the night after that. With the full moon still in the sky and Karkat missing Dave realized just how fucking often he relied on his limited texting to pass the time. It was official. Full moons sucked ass. He was saying that a lot now but that didn’t make the phrase any less true. 

It was towards the end of the full moon period that Dave began to stream long paragraphs to Karkat’s phone for him to see when he finally Turned back. Most of what he sent was utter bullshit. Some of them were song lyrics. Some of them were homework answers. All of them contained an undercurrent of pure longing that he wasn’t sure he wanted to edit out. He’d grown okay with the idea of being seen, being known, by Karkat. 

Outside night had fallen, the weakening moon still showering its pale light across the wooden floor through the slats in the window blinds. There was dust on the floor. Dave needed to sweep or something soon. Wash his sheets. Windex the spotted window. Anything to help claim this space as his, as inhabited, the corner points of the small room bounding the limits of his own sanctuary. He’d just managed to strip his bed down to the bare mattress when his empty phone finally vibrated with the first text message he’d received in days. 

Dave all but threw himself at the cellphone, wrestling it free of the mess of tangled blankets and bedding it had fallen into. He flipped the phone open and thumbed through his recent texts. 

The bad news was that it wasn’t from Karkat. 

The worse news was that it wasn’t from Mr. Vantas either. 

It was from Slick.

Dave clicked open the text without bothering to think too much about it. If the contents of the text were worthy of his worry, he’d soon find out. No sense in struggling over something that might not be a federal fucking issue for once. 

SS: Dave, could you come into the kitchen for a moment?

Dave stared at the text. Outside, he heard the telltale crunch of tires on the gravel driveway even though it was nearly ten at night. The unseen car’s engine revved loudly right before it cut off, which meant that Boxcars was driving. The Midnight crew had no business at the safe house at this time of night, not unless something had happened.

Dave texted Slick back.

Dave: what the fuck happened?  
SS: What makes you think something happened?  
Dave: the rest of your crew just pulled up outside at 10 at night on a fucking wednesday so dont bullshit me  
Dave: what the fuck happened?  
SS: Dave, I really think you should come into the kitchen now.

Dave frowned at his phone, nerves squirming to anxious life in his belly. He followed through with making his way to the kitchen on instinct, not really thinking about it. He was still wearing his old jeans, but for once his shirt was loose-fitting and short sleeved, revealing just how fucked up his arms were. 

The Midnight Crew were waiting for him in the kitchen. Slick’s face was worried but not scared and Dave couldn’t see any damning manila envelopes ready to get sprung on him. Clubs didn’t even have his laptop out. What was going on?

“Dave?” Slick asked, “You okay?”

Dave nodded on automatic and crossed his arms over his chest, not caring that the move telegraphed how defensive he felt. “What happened?”

This time Slick didn’t bullshit him. The fed simply opened up his laptop and began to boot it up. “I know this is a lot to ask of you,” he said seriously. “But do you maybe think that you could give us a hand with a little virtual hunting?”

This was so far out of line from anything Dave had been dreading that it caught him off-guard, but he was still quick on the uptake. “Who are you hunting?”

“Clubs,” Slick grunted, and then the tiny man had launched into a speech about different techniques they’d used to try and track down Bro and how each one had failed.

“So,” Clubs Deuce started. “The idea is to try and find Bro by finding out who all is a part of his inner circle. Bro didn’t act in a vacuum—he had people out there supporting him and paying his bills. They’re every bit as guilty as he is, and if we find out who these creeps are, we might be able to find out the who, where, and how that Strider has managed to evade us successfully for so long.” Deuce shot a keen look at Dave, stewing over his next words, fingernails tapping against his leg like he was typing at an invisible keyboard. “You see, Dave, serial killers across the board tend to act in predictable ways. They have patterns, tells, tiny clues they leave behind that psychologists everywhere froth at the bit to get ahold of. Your Bro is not like that.”

“I know,” Dave said. None of this was a surprise to him. Bro wasn’t some cookie-cutter psychopath. He followed no mold but his own.

Deuce continued. “Other killers, even the great ones, they all make mistakes because they’re mostly driven by their violent passions. They slip up. Get sloppy. And that’s when we catch them.”

“Bro’s not driven by any ‘violent passion’,” Dave scoffed. “Thinking like that is utterly delusional.”

“Why?” Deuce questioned. “Because he’s so calculating? So careful? So callus and cold?”

“Because he’s crafty, clever, crooked and whatever else other descriptive C words a thesaurus can vomit up about him. Conniving. Capricious. Cruel. Creator of cold cases. Take your fucking pick. I could tell you he’s creepy, confident, combatant, clinical, cryptic, and extremely comprehensive. I could tell you anything that’s true, but how does this trading of words help us stop him?”

“Have you ever hunted rabbits before?” Deuce asked, completely derailing Dave’s train of thought.

Dave shook his head. He’d been raised in a city apartment building. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever seen a real rabbit before, and absolutely zero part of him was interested in hunting something for sport. 

“Rabbits are wily creatures,” Deuce told him. “To catch one unaware is impossible, so from the start the rabbit knows its being hunted and it goes to ground. To catch one, you start by blocking off its bolt holes. You remove all the places it can hide, trap it above ground with nowhere to go. That’s what we need to do with Strider—take away all of his hidey holes, all of his darkweb buddies that might be helping him hide. We trap the bastard above ground.” 

Dave just stared at the man.

Droog spoke up. “We’ve asked you enough questions about Bro,” he said. “Now tell us about his friends.”

Dave swallowed thickly. “I don’t know much about them,” he admitted. “Bro never let me poke around his systems much, but there is one guy that might have a hand in this mess. I don’t know his real name but online he went by Lil’Cal, except when they spoke Bro called the bastard Caliborn.”

Deuce was attentively writing all of this down on a yellow notepad in some impenetrable script that wasn’t English. Code maybe? Dave went on. “This fucker was like Bro’s best buddy. They talked a lot, mostly about the job but also about other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” Slick asked, one scarred eyebrow raised. 

Dave nodded. “They both hate football. It was a popular topic with them.”

“Anything you can tell us about this guy?”

“Uh,” Dave said, thinking back to the muffled conversations he could barely make out. “Caliborn hates women. And homosexuals. And he’s a racist son of a bitch. Basically his personality is what happens when someone personifies a raging dumpster fire.”

“Anything else?” Slick asked. 

Dave nodded, his neck stiff. His shoulders were tight. When he spoke, his voice was small. “He’s killed people.”

Deuce’s pen didn’t stop its rapid scribbling, the nib scratching at the thick paper. 

“Who?” Slick asked, oddly gentle.

Dave shrugged helplessly. “Prostitutes mostly,” he said. “He’d brag to Bro about it afterwards. I don’t know what city or even country he’s in though so I don’t know how much I can help you. I don’t even know where he lives.”

“Anything in specific?” Slick asked. “Any single detail you remember that might help us ID the guy?”

“He likes the redheads the best,” Dave said miserably. “And whoever he is, he’s rich as fuck. That’s all I know.”

“Would this someone be listed under Bro’s contacts?” Slick asked curiously.

“Yeah, on his computer for sure,” Dave nodded. “They talked all the time.”

Clubs Deuce pursed his lips in thought, then sighed. “As soon as we break into that damned laptop, we’ll have the bastard,” he swore. “I almost wish Tech would let me take a crack at it.”

Dave spoke without thinking. “I could try—” He choked off the sentence. Stopped. Took a deep breath. Did not allow his mind to go down that particular road. His hands were shaking.

Slick was watching him closely. His dark eye glittered. “Kid,” he trailed off, but he didn’t need to say more than that.

Dave’s mind was racing. Could he do this? Was it possible? He tried to speak but his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. His spit tasted dangerously acidic as his stomach heaved. Dave barely choked it back in time, nearly gagging as he resolved to never speak of this again. 

It was too late though; Slick had seen Dave’s reaction. He’d know that there was something there worth following, but this time he didn’t push for more.

For that Dave was grateful. Thinking about Dirk for longer than a moment made him feel like he was sitting on the floor of his old apartment again, staring at the locked door, struggling to come to terms with the fact that it would never open again. 

“That’s all I know,” he ended lamely. “I’ll tell you if I remember more.”

Slick was still staring at him, hawk-like. “You should get some sleep,” he said, dismissing Dave. ”I’ll let you know if we find anything or need anything else.”

Dave nodded and drifted back to his room, where he drowned out all of his thoughts in a hot shower and then stared at his stripped bed for a moment before shrugging a clean sheet onto the mattress and calling it a night. Like his overactive mind, that was one more thing that could wait until in the morning. 

Then his phone vibrated again.

This time, when Dave fished the device out of his pocket, he saw gray text.

Karkat: I’M OKAY. EVERYTHING IS FINE OVER HERE. FULL MOONS STILL SUCK BUT THAT’S NO SURPRISE.  
Karkat: I’M READING OVER EVERYTHING YOU SENT ME WHILE I WAS OUT. JESUS, THERE’S A LOT TO MAKE MY WAY THROUGH. HOW CAN YOU TYPE SO MUCH?  
Dave: sometimes i just feel like i have a lot to say  
Karkat: IS THAT RIGHT?  
Karkat: BESIDES ME, IS THERE ANYONE ELSE THAT YOU TALK TO LIKE THIS?  
Dave: no not really  
Karkat: ANY YET YOU’RE STILL SO FULL OF WORDS. IT’S QUITE THE CONUNDRUM ISN’T IT?  
Dave: are you really okay?  
Karkat: YEAH. I’M JUST TIRED. I DON’T THINK I CAN STAY AWAKE FOR MUCH LONGER. I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT I’M ALRIGHT. I’LL BE AT SCHOOL TOMORROW.  
Dave: thats great  
Dave: i missed you  
Karkat: YOU KNOW, I DON’T REALLY FEEL TIME PASSING AS A WOLF. IT’S ALL A BLUR REALLY. I KNOW THAT ITS BEEN A FEW DAYS SINCE WE’VE SEEN EACH OTHER, BUT IT DOESN’T QUITE FEEL THAT WAY TO ME. EVEN SO, YEAH, I MISS YOU TOO. 

Dave couldn’t help but smile at his phone.

Dave: god were a mess both of us are messes aren’t we  
Karkat: SO? WHO CARES ABOUT ANY OF THAT. I’M A FUCKING WEREWOLF AND YOU’RE LIVING UNDER AN ALIAS AND HIDING FROM A SERIAL KILLER! I THINK WE’VE BOTH EARNED A LITTLE DEVIATION FROM THE NORM.  
Dave: yeah  
Dave: i want to talk to you for the next six straight hours but i know you need sleep now  
Karkat: I DO.  
Karkat: SHIT.  
Karkat: IT’S GETTING HARDER TO LOOK AT MY PHONE.  
Dave: go to sleep then you idiot  
Dave: ill be here for you in the morning  
Karkat: PROMISE?  
Dave: barring all unusual attacks of circumstance, i promise  
Dave: now go the fuck to sleep  
Karkat: HA, NICE LOOPHOLE YOU ADDED THERE DAVE. STILL, THANK YOU.  
Dave: night karkat  
Karkat: NIGHT DAVE.

Dave put his phone back down. It didn’t vibrate again. He looked at the face of the moon through the slats in his blinds, waned just enough to show a small sliver scraped from it’s surface, just enough to break the monthly curse that stole Karkat away when the moon was at its fullest. There were still so many things that they needed to talk about, but for now, with night creeping in through the window and sleep pulling at his eyelids, Dave set it aside like so much dirty laundry.

Later. It would all happen later. But for tonight, his dreams went on unbroken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yeah, this is kinda a slow one but its been a few fast ones back to back now and i felt like we needed a stop to take a deep breath before the final arcs start hitting. Hold on guys, its about to get wild from here on out >;)
> 
> And like a lot of really important stuff still gets set up in this chapter! its wheels inside of wheels


	19. chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter is up and ready for 413!!!!!!!!! 
> 
> And whoa, its a big one. Get ready because it's here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dave considered himself a categorically stubborn person. Old habits died hard with him, which was why even though months had passed since he’d been in his old apartment he still woke up before Slick had ever touched his bedroom door. By the time the gentle knock had sounded, Dave was already awake and sitting upright. One of the upsides to this creaky old house was the loudness of footsteps across the wooden floors. Dave knew where Slick was at all times, even when asleep. 

“Kid?” Slick called out, and Dave could make out nothing amiss in his voice.

“What?” Dave called back, shrugging on a fresh shirt from the pile of clean clothes on the floor he hadn’t gotten to folding yet, slapping out the wrinkles. 

The door cracked open in a way that would have been ominous if Slick had wanted it to be, but then Dave caught sight of the fed’s deeply lined, worried face. The agent was getting better at being unreadable, but Dave could still make out most expressions he tried to hide. “What happened?”

Slick didn’t deny that something had happened. He merely reached up to scratch loudly at the scruff at his chin. “Has Karkat texted you this morning?”

The unexpected direction of the question made Dave nervous. He didn’t trust that this was a harmless conversation. It couldn’t be, not with the degree of tension bleeding into the open air between them. Something not good had happened. “No, he hasn’t,” Dave answered blankly, mind racing through the list of awful possibilities as fast as he could. 

Slick nodded to himself, but the motion was cautious in the way that he moved when he was trying not to spook Dave into fight or flight. Dave revised his internal assessment of the growing situation. Something _bad _ had happened. 

“What the fuck happened?” Dave asked, and Slick didn’t try to bullshit him. Instead, he tried to break it gently. “This time,” he said. “The body the cops found last night didn’t belong to Bro. She wasn’t his work.”

Floored and sickened, Dave blinked. “Who’s then?” He asked, because if Slick was telling him this, then somehow it was connected to him. Somehow this was his fault. He reached for his shades and slid them on. 

“We don’t know,” Slick admitted, and for a second Dave was confused, but then the fed continued. “We still don’t have the bastard’s name, but Jesus, Dave, that poor girl died from a werewolf attack. We think it’s the wolf that Turned Karkat.”

The room rocked around him. Outside, the sky began to show the rosy signs of morning. The alarm on his phone began to go off, waking him for the school day that he was suddenly sure he wasn’t going to get. He switched off the beeping noise and sat in silence for a moment. _“Fuck.”_

“Fuck is right,” Slick signed, scuffing the worn floor with the toe of his shoe. “A goddamn mess is what it is. I’m getting sick of Clubs texting me pics of dead bodies.” He frowned at the floor. “They’re pulling Karkat out and driving him to the scene so that he can positively identify if it was the wolf who Turned him or if there’s some other lone wolf wandering around the country that just had an unlucky night.”

“Is that really the best the cops can do?” Dave asked, worried. The last thing he wanted was Karkat at a crime scene that had a body on the ground. Karkat had enough trauma as it was without piling more on top of him. But then the next through struck him. He sat up straighter. “They’re driving him? How close was the attack?”

“It was in Fort Dodge, about two and a half hours away,” Slick told him. “Look, Dave, I wish as much as you do that we could keep Karkat away from this, but right now his nose is the only chance we have at catching a positive identity from this wolf.”

That was way too close for comfort, especially considering the fact that the wolf had tried to murder Karkat at school not that long ago. He blinked, trying to make the pieces fit. “I thought that after Karkat’s attack his dad moved him from Seattle way out here to fuckoffsville Iowa because it was supposed to be far enough away to make it safe for him? There can’t be that many goddamn rouge wolves running around fucking Iowa.”

“I know, Dave,” Slick said, frustrated. “We already know it was him, but legally we still need Karkat to identify him.”

“Will scents even hold up in court?” Dave asked dryly, picking at his comforter. “What’s the legality of a werewolf’s nose to the system anyway?”

“It’s inadmissible evidence,” Slick answered, sounding strained. “I just thought you should know so that you can keep Karkat calm today.”

“I’ll text him non-stop,” Dave swore. 

“Not with school you won’t,” Slick grunted. 

Dave shrugged. “So I’ll skip it.”

“You’d fucking better,” the fed growled. “Because I’m sending you with him.”

For a second it was like the room spun again. Dave wasn’t sure he’d heard right, except that he objectively understood the words that had left Slick’s mouth. But the content was so off-field that there had to be some mistake. “What?”

“You heard me,” Slick grunted. “I’m sending you with him. It’s a long drive and I thought it’d be best if he had some company. But,” Slick warned. “You aren’t off the hook. This isn’t your case to work and it’s an active crime scene, so you’ll stay your boney ass in the fucking car, understood?”

“Fine,” Dave agreed, still shocked. No part of him wanted to see another dead body every again, so he’d be more than happy to get to stay in the car. He’d seen enough blood to last a lifetime. 

“Good,” Slick said. “I’m driving us over there soon, so best get ready with haste.”

“With haste?” Dave joked to ease the terrible atmosphere. “What the fuck’s wrong with quickly? Get ready quickly—it was that fucking easy, man. With haste my ass. Sounds like some kind of 20’s noir mobster bullshit.”

Slick rolled his eye, pleased that Dave was obviously trying to lighten the mod. “Just fucking be there, ya hear?”

“Loud and clear,” Dave said, and Slick closed the door. 

Dave all but jumped out of bed. He didn’t text Karkat. He figured he’d see him soon anyway, and didn’t want to interrupt whatever talk was surely going on at the Vantas house. He did not envy the fly on that wall. 

He brushed his teeth. Ran his fingers through his hair. Didn’t think about what would surely happen today. Tied his beat-up old sneakers onto his feet and realized for the hundredth time that he probably needed a new pair. 

Dave wasn’t much of a breakfast eater but Slick still met him at the door with a granola bar and a bottle of water. “Damn,” Dave teased. “Look at you being all domestic and shit.”

Slick wasn’t impressed as he straightened his eyepatch, dressed in a black suit that didn’t try to hide the ever-present gun at his hip. “Just get in the damn car.”

Dave shut up and accepted the food and water, which he stashed in his empty backpack for later. The sun was barely in the sky when they left, the horizon painted pink and blushing with the promise of new light. There were still stars. In the west, the newly waned moon hung bloated and shrinking, a fragment of it still visible above the tree line. On a normal day after the full moon, Karkat should be at home sleeping off the manic rush of being Turned. Instead Dave was on his way to pick him up to see a dead body. Life was fucked sometimes. 

The drive was short. They stopped uptown in the McDonald’s parking lot to switch cars for an equally black four door driven by a solemn Boxcars, who took Slick’s car and sped out the parking lot rough enough that Slick winced at the sound of his tires screeching against the asphalt as his car barreled out of sight. 

“If that fucker so much as scratches my goddamn car,” Slick muttered to himself just loud enough for Dave to hear. He didn’t finish his threat and Dave didn’t ask him to, silent in the backseat through some kind of Plexiglas barrier that divided the front from the back, which was weird because Dave though only cop cars had shit like this in them and not even an undercover cop car looked quite this expensive. There was a small sliding square in the middle of the shield, currently open, and the sound of radio static crackled through.

Then they were at Karkat’s house all too quick. Mr. Vantas was waiting outside on the porch, his arms crossed across his broad chest.

“Stay here,” Slick instructed, and he left Dave in the running car. He could see the fed talking to Karkat’s dad but couldn’t make out any words. He knew that the fed was angry though. Karkat’s dad just seemed sad. The front door opened and Karkat stepped out. He was dressed in an oversized gray hoodie that swallowed him whole. The hood was up even though it was sweltering outside with the early hour. Dave couldn’t read Karkat’s expression. He gave a half-hearted wave from the car anyway, not sure if Karkat could see him through the tinted windows. 

Gradually the two adults separated, and at last Karkat headed over to the car, Slick following on his heels. The side door opened and Karkat slid in, boneless and huffing. Slick reclaimed the driver’s seat and within a second the car was speeding off again, out of the cul-de-sac and towards the highway. 

Karkat didn’t say anything, but Dave didn’t have to be sitting close to him to make out the heavy black bags pressed into the skin below his bloodshot red eyes. Shit, how much sleep had he even managed to get last night? Four hours? Less? “Are you okay?” Dave asked, concerned.

“No,” Karkat deadpanned. 

“That’s fair,” Dave said, picking at the seat fabric with his bitten-down nails. “Today sucks.”

Karkat looked at him then, searchingly, like he was trying to dissect some hidden meaning in Dave’s words. “Yeah,” he admitted at last. “Today does suck.” He didn’t say anything else. 

Dave watched the houses drift past the car window until the buildings were swallowed by cornfields and soybean plots. It was amazing how fast urban areas vanished in the Midwest, giving way to nothing but farmland for mile after rolling mile. The only sound was the soft funk of something jazzy through the radio and the occasional clunk of the car hitting a pothole. 

It didn’t take long for Dave to catch Karkat’s chin move towards his chest, eyes blinking to fight off sleep that Dave knew he needed. 

Dave shifted closer. The car was compact enough that it didn’t take much to cross the few inches between them and offer his shoulder. “Here,” he said. “You should get some sleep.”

Karkat hesitated, then looked grateful as he settled into place at Dave’s side. “Thanks,” he said, yawning.

Slick glanced at them through the divider. “Do I need to enforce a six -inch minimum distance between the two of you?”

Dave flicked him off and the fed laughed but left them alone after that. Karkat made himself comfortable against Dave, his head pillowed on his shoulder. It didn’t take more than a few minutes for Karkat to fall into some much-needed sleep. Dave tried to let the warmth of Karkat at his side and the gentle rolling of the car lull him likewise into rest, but he’d never felt more wide-awake. It was the car probably. Before meeting Slick Dave could have counted all of the times he’d ridden in a car on his hands and the jolting motion, the feeling of the ground racing by, it all made sleep impossibly far away. 

He looked out the window mostly, but there were only so many farmhouses with floral patterns painted on the side of old wooden barns interspersed between the corn. So much goddamned corn. How could America eat this much fucking corn? Of course, it could have been something entirely different than corn, but Dave’s limited crop knowledge classified anything tall, green, and leafy automatically as corn. The other green things were soybeans probably. That was it. Those were the only two crops he knew grew here this time of year due to information gleaned at school from the good old backroads farm kids. 

And it grew boring, watching field after field of corn flash by. Plus the arm Karkat was laying on felt dead and tingly. All in all, terrible road trip experience. Only Karkat’s semi-unconscious presence made it slightly bearable. 

But the long drive evaporated all too quickly as the car ate up the pavement, and they were pulling off an exit into another small nowhere farm town. The water tower read “Fort Dodge” across it in big letters in the distance. 

Tense now, Dave let Karkat continue sleeping as Slick wove through the warren-like roads. It was still early morning and what few cars were on the roads were being funneled through a series of police barricades that had been hastily erected across the only exit that led to the highway, weeding out strangers in hopes of getting lucky enough to stumble across a killer. 

The cops weren’t guarding the way in though, and they let Slick’s car pass unharassed. 

“Do you think they’ll find him?” Dave asked as they drove past the final barrier. 

Slick shrugged as Karkat stirred against Dave’s shoulder. “The sun’s up now, so he’ll be on two legs, not four. That means he’s probably got a car here somewhere, or a house or some other bolt hole. If he’s stupid or panicked, they might have a chance.” Slick glanced behind him as a lone cop car peeled off the pack to tail them, lights off and sirens dead. The police radio crackled to life, codes Dave didn’t understand rumbling forth. 

Slick answered back with ease, speaking quietly, and at the sound Karkat finally succeeded in twitching himself back to wakefulness. He blinked blearily around the sunbathed car, eyes squinted. “Where are we?”

“We’re almost there,” Slick answered softly. His knuckles were white against the steering wheel. 

Karkat’s face paled. He looked slightly sick. “Oh,” he said, dejected. 

“Hey,” Dave said gentle, squeezing his hand. “I’m here.” Not ‘it’ll be okay’, not ‘things will be fine’, no lies like that. Just, I’m here. That would have to be enough. 

Karkat squeezed his hand back, his palm warm and the fingers tight. The car turned down a road, then another until the pavement dissolved into old dust that billowed up in clouds around the car. Behind them, the police cruiser silently followed along. 

The road turned out to be a driveway, the letters PM painted in white on a winged mailbox. The red little mail flap thingy was up, proof of a letter from a dead woman. The mailbox had a handprint painted lovingly onto the side of it. How quickly relics like these became something more than sentimental once the people who created them were gone. Dave looked away, biting his lip between his teeth. 

The house itself was an active crime scene, the driveway and yard choked with police, firetrucks, and an ambulance with the lights off. 

Slick parked in the grass and let the car idle. “Kid,” he said, looking behind him at Karkat. “You don’t have to do this. You can still change your mind.”

Karkat looked sick and scared, but there was steel hiding behind his eyes. “I’ll do it,” he said.

Dave felt a little bit of pride at that, but Slick just looked sad. “Alright, kid,” the fed said, sighing. “Let’s get this over with. Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“Stay in the car. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t even let anyone else see you, okay?” Slick asked, sternly. 

Dave wanted to joke but the atmosphere was far too serious for that. A woman had died here. Horrifically. Dave wondered how long it would take for the flowers in her window sills to shrivel and wither, then shook off the morbid thought. “Okay,” he agreed. 

Karkat and Slick got out of the car. The policeman that had been following them immediately joined the mismatched pair, looking grave and exhausted as he led them around the house to the backyard, past where yellow tape had been strung up across the hedges. 

They vanished from sight. Dave felt a pang in his chest, sharp enough to burn. He wished this was something he could have spared Karkat from; He’d seen plenty of dismembered, tortured bodies before, one more wasn’t about to break him, even one wolf-killed. But Karkat?

Death had such a strong smell to it. Part blood and viscera, but there was a mote of something deeper as well, some hind-brain instinct to cower down when faced with human mortality, the soul itself crushed down to nothing in a body that could no longer sustain it. It was bad enough to smell death as a human. How much stronger was the scent to a werewolf? The question here wasn’t about this fucked-up situation causing Karkat mental pain, it was about how much. 

Dave hissed in his breath, his chest hurting. This was going to suck. Just the impending knowledge of the murder was pressing in on him, and he was in the apartment again, all alone, with blood on his knees as he scrubbed at the floor, bleach burning in his nostrils to mask the scent of blood and piss, his ribs aching from the latest beating, listening to Bro move around the apartment and wincing every time he took a step in the direction of the backroom. He got so tied up in his own goddamn head that time lost meaning to him, so he didn’t know how long it took for Karkat to suddenly reappear until the side door yanked itself open and Dave startled to life so hard that his fists came up on reflex.

Karkat stood there, tears streaming down his face as he sniffled miserably. He still hesitated when he saw Dave jump to the defensive. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just me.”

Dave couldn’t have felt more like shit. “It’s cool,” he said, the words meaningless. “I’m okay.” He forced his hands to lower. “You?”

Karkat wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “I… I,” he stammered, then shook his head as his throat closed up. Saltwater welled up in his eyes again as his face twisted into pure grief. 

“Come here,” Dave said at once, scooting over to allow Karkat the room to slide in beside him. Karkat instantly curled into him, clutching with both hands, taking these awful, gasping, shuddering breaths. 

Dave barely noticed Slick silently getting into the driver’s seat; his attention was only for Karkat. 

“Hey,” he said desperately, low and soothing. “You’re okay. You’ll be okay.” His hands were tangled in Karkat’s hair, holding him close. “What do you need?” Whatever the answer was, Dave would do it. 

Karkat hiccupped back a sob. “It was him,” he said, burying his face into Dave’s shirt. “It was him. He’s killed the mail lady.”

By this point Dave wasn’t surprised. Slick’s overwrought face had told him everything he needed to know. 

“I can’t get his fucking smell out my nose,” Karkat wheezed, still crying. 

“I’m here,” Dave said, the words flowing out of him. “Shhhhh, I’m here.” He strained his mind to try and remember what Dirk had always said to calm him down or cheer him up, but Dirk had never really had to use words. He’d been all action, deflection, distraction. Anything to take Dave’s mind off whatever horror had surely just happened. 

But Dave couldn’t be like that—all he had were words, so he sought to use them well. 

“You know,” he said softly. “Slick would flip his shit if he heard me say this, but fuck it.” After that Dave was certain that the fed was now listening intently, but the opening broke through to Karkat and he showed a bit of interest.

“What?” Karkat asked, confused. 

“It wasn’t always bad, growing up,” Dave said, seeking to distract him with one of the few stories he could tell that were categorically not terrible. “Bro was a rotten bastard to the core, but every few months he’d show me a kindness. I remember once, he ordered this new game in the mail and he was actually fucking kinda excited when it came in. It was some absolute piece of shit skateboarding jpegged monstrosity, like negative five stars and all that shit, probably produced by some college hackers trying to create a game while high out their minds, but that was exactly the appeal of such a piece of shit. There was no goal, no winning, just endless shitting around online trying to find new and creative ways to break the buggy game even more through glitches. And even better—it was multiplayer.”

Dave knew he had the attention of every person in the car, and Karkat’s sobs had slowed, losing force. 

“So this one time, he let me play it with him. I was his player two, and we spent the afternoon in some kind of truce, just shitting around together as my clumsy ass wiped out doing sick kick flips off of shitty game sidewalks. It was fun, you know? There was gentle teasing, back and forth ribbing, fuckin’ everything. I even remember him laughing as I wiped out for like the hundredth time, and after that I gave up trying to be good at the game and started seeking out ways to wreck myself hilariously, just to see if I could get him to laugh again. I think that’s one of the best memories I have—us wasting the day on a shitty skating game, just us as bros.”

He left out all the bad shit that was wound up inside that memory, shoved everything else away because this was about Karkat now, not him. “That wasn’t the only time either. That shitty game became some kind of tradition for us. I always looked forward to it.” He let fondness color his tone, not for Bro, but for that shitty game that had probably saved his ass a few times, because when playing it Dave was sure that in that moment, as long as he had that controller in his hands, he was safe. 

“Why?” Karkat asked, intrigued despite himself. “How could a monster like that be nice sometimes?”

Dave knew the answer. There’d been studies done on dogs before, and the ones that were beaten and shown occasional kindness were twice as loyal, twice as obedient, than the ones that had only been beaten because once shown a kindness, they’d do anything to receive it again. Just another of Bro’s mind games, but one that hurt less in the moment. But that wasn’t all of the truth, so Dave spoke it. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I guess there were parts of him that weren’t fucked beyond repair. Even monsters are a little human at times.”

“I’m not sure if I believe that,” Karkat forced out, his voice hoarse. “No one can act both monstrous and kind at once.”

Dave held Karkat closer. He knew what he believed. “I think that people are complex individuals,” he said. “I think they’re capable of anything they want, the good and the bad, and at times, both.”

“Even killers?” Karkat asked, and there was a growl buried in his tone, some deep-seated wolf thing that made the hairs on the back of Dave’s neck raise. 

“Yeah,” Dave said. “But you’ve got to understand something. The good does not make up for the bad. It never does. It’s not some fucking balance system. There are some sins so atrocious that no amount of good can cover them up. Sins there’s no return from.”

“I think you’re talking about yourself again,” Karkat told him, scolding. “Dave, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“For once, I’m not talking about myself,” Dave corrected him gently. “I’m talking about monsters.”

Slick started the car. The engine rumbled beneath them. 

Karkat shivered with a shudder that went through his whole body, but when it had passed he seemed calmer, like a cloud had lifted. Dave was still running his fingers slowly through Karkat’s wild hair, the other arm wrapped around his shoulders as the car started forward. 

“She fought back, you know?” Karkat whispered to him. “It was his blood on the ground too. She died bravely.”

Dave didn’t say anything. He just kept holding Karkat until the sobs died down to nothing and the cornfields swallowed up the small town that was struggling to piece together a killer’s intent. There wasn’t any talking as they returned to the highway and headed back. The long drive was completely silent and Karkat stayed wound up around Dave the entire time. 

It wasn’t until they’d reached home’s city limits that the police radio crackled to life again, Boxcar’s gravelly voice reverberating through the car. Slick picked up the handheld receiver and spoke into it. “Hearts, if you wrecked my car you piece of shit, I’ll—”

What came through next was unintelligible to Dave. “Spades, two doves down at 3.14. Clubs is en route. Initiate go to ground protocol.”

The sound of Slick’s cursing filled the air, and the engine whined as he stepped on the gas. “I gotta drop the kid off first,” he explained, complaining. The needle inched past 75 on the speedometer.

“Goddammit, Spades,” Boxcars growled out. “Understood.” Then the radio cut out.

“Uh,” Dave voiced. “What the hell?”

“Not now, Dave,” Slick said, taking a turn way too fast. “I’ll explain later.”

The agent only slowed down once they reached the neighborhoods, forced to comply with road laws with civilians around. They reached Karkat’s house all too fast. 

Slick pressed the car to idle and turned back to them with a glance. He took in the tangled together state of them, his expression unreadable. “Karkat,” he said. “You did good today. You didn’t have to, but you did and that counts for a lot. We’re one step closer now to stopping him.”

“Are you sure?” Karkat asked, and Slick didn’t flinch.

“He can’t hide forever,” Slick swore. “And even now we’re tightening the net. He can’t hide after a mistake like this.”

“Was it a mistake?” Karkat questioned. “It happened last night. If he’d been running loose all full moon far more would be dead. Somehow, this was planned. It was cold-blooded murder even as a wolf. Somehow, he planned this, but I don’t know how.”

Slick nodded like the same realization had occurred to him. “We know,” he said. “They’re hunting for any connection between the mail carrier and the wolf now.”

Karkat nodded. “Okay,” he said, steeling himself. “I did all I could. I just hope it’s enough.”

“Karkat,” Slick said. “It’s always enough,” he said, and then he opened the door. 

Karkat regretfully untangled himself from Dave’s grip, lingering a bit too long before releasing his hold. He unbuckled his seat belt. “Dave… thank you. For everything.”

Dave nodded, and when Karkat leaned in one last time Dave obediently captured his lips for a brief kiss, not caring if Slick saw. When Karkat pulled back Dave wanted to follow after him, but the dread was back, summoned by that mysterious radio call from Boxcars. 

Karkat walked over to his house and was greeted by his dad at the door, who immediately embraced him. Dave looked away as Slick put the car into motion again and sped off without a word.

“Slick,” Dave had to try. “What the fuck is happening?”

“Wait till we get back to the safe house,” the fed advised. “Clubs should be there waiting for us.”

It didn’t take long for them to reach the safe house again. Slick’s car was safely parked in the driveway and Slick had to park the black four door beside it in the grass. A motorcycle was pulled up next to the porch steps, and Clubs deuce was waiting by the front door and pacing back and forth. 

“Diamonds is on his way,” Deuce said as soon as Dave and Slick turned the car off and got out. “Shit’s hit the fan in a bad way, boss.”

Slick held up a hand, stopping him as he gave Dave a sharp glance. “Let’s get in the house first,” he said. 

Slick unlocked the three locks and disarmed the alert system for them to enter, and they gathered at the kitchen table. A part of Dave wanted to retreat to his room, but he’d been going over the words Boxcars had used to puzzle meaning from them, and the conclusion he’d come to wasn’t good. 

“What’s the damage?” Slick asked seriously. 

Deuce pulled out his laptop and booted it up without a word. “We’re shielding it from the media now,” he said. “The story shouldn’t break until at least tomorrow.”

Dave visibly winced when Deuce turned his laptop around to show them the screen. A dingy city overpass over railroad tracks, graffiti everywhere, a homeless encampment in the distance. The scene was lit up by police lights and firetrucks, illuminating the blood of the concrete and the pair of bodies that hung from the barbed wire strung around their throats, motionless in the air with their hands bound behind their backs. They’d been strung up as one, the wire leading upwards to the overpass overhead, the shadows ripped away by red and blue sirens. The blood looked black in the half-light and Dave felt like he was going to throw up until he saw orange behind them. 

I’m getting closer, lil’ bro, the message read. Come out or I’ll keep killing them.

His stomach heaved, but there was nothing but bile to come up and he hastily choked it back down. His hands gripped the wooden table so hard he was afraid he’d break it. Clubs scrolled to the next image, a close up of both faces.

“Do you know them?” Deuce asked softly. 

Dave peered at their faces. If he’d known them once, he couldn’t tell now. Bro had taken great pains this time to hide their identities. They’d been _mutilated_. 

He shook his head, fighting back another wave of sickness. “I can’t tell,” he answered. 

Deuce looked unmoved. “That’s okay,” he said. “We’ll get a positive ID soon.”

“Two?” Dave all but croaked out. “Why two this time?” He asked, but he already knew the answer. 

Slick sighed, pained, before he answered. “Because Strider is trying to force our hand,” he said. 

And Dave had known about the deadline hanging over his head, threatening him with more bodies if he didn’t figure out how to stop it in time, but even he had never imagined Bro would go for two at once. He was certain when the IDs came back he’d recognize their faces, but a fruitless hunt through every Facebook profile of everyone in the city was a fool’s endeavor. If he was going to stop this, he needed to do what Bro had done. Up the risk. Step up the game. Play for keeps. 

“I…” Dave said, paused, and then took a deep breath as he evaluated the fatal weight of what he was about to do. “I think I can get into Bro’s laptop,” he said, and Clubs Deuce’s mouth fell open. “But I’ll need something first.”

“What do you need?” Slick asked at once, oddly excited. Deuce still looked stunned. How long had Slick suspected him? How long had he been willing to wait for Dave to try and do the right thing?

Dave closed his eyes. “I need a yearbook from Public School Number 14, year 2010. Fourth grade.”

Slick was already texting away, shooting the orders to whatever underling would fulfil them. It was up to Clubs to point out the obvious. “Dave, you weren’t in fourth grade in 2010. You were in first grade then.”

“I know,” Dave admitted, fingers tapping manically at the tabletop. “I need the book and Bro’s laptop if I’m going to try and do this.”

“Dave,” Slick began.

“No,” Dave cut him off, shaking his head. “That computer is the only way to stop him. We can’t waste time crawling through fucking Facebook profiles, hoping for another goddamn miracle. We’ve got to stop him now, before he strikes again. Before he kills three people next time. Before he knocks on the safe house door with a gun in his hand and kills us all.” 

Abruptly, he was angry. Angry at himself for letting things go this far. Those two people’s deaths were on his hands now, more bodies added to the record. Angry at Bro, for doing this, for forcing his hand. And even angry at Dirk, for not being here to tell Dave what he needed to do, for not fixing this when he’d had the chance all those years ago and leaving Dave all alone to clean up the mess their family had made. 

“Book, laptop,” Dave said again. “I need them both as soon as possible.”

“The public library will have a copy of the yearbook, and we can drive up the computer today,” Slick answered him. “They’ll both be here by tonight. “Boxcars’ll bring them up himself as he drives up tonight. It’ll take a few hours, but we’ll get it done.”

“Okay,” Dave decided, and he sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. He didn’t move for hours. He waited, his mind almost completely blank and he blocked out anything and everything that wasn’t the memory of the tech that controlled Bro’s apartment. Time passed at an imperceptible rate. Hours flashed by as minutes as the seconds ground by like weeks. The sun set after a sky painted the color of blood. His phone went off non-stop for a few hours, Karkat for sure, but for once Dave ignored him, focused inward as he tried to prepare himself for what he needed to do. If it were an emergency, Karkat would call him. Until that happened, Karkat could wait for a while. 

Darkness fell. Then midnight passed. Sometime around that time Diamonds Droog arrived to lurk wordlessly in the corner. Sometimes the three agents spoke with lowered voices, but Dave didn’t pay them any mind until around 2 am, when Boxcars at last called Slick’s phone.

“Boss,” Boxcars said, his voice distant through the phone as Dave listened in from the table that had been his domain of solitude for the fast several hours. “I’m just outside of town. I’ve got the book and the laptop with me.”

“Good,” Slick said, gruffly. “You’ll be here soon then?”

“Yeah, uh,” Boxcars answered. “Listen, Boss. We might have a problem.”

“What is it?” Slick asked as Deuce and Droog stepped in close to hear. 

“I’ve got a guy from tech driving,” Boxcars said, sounding highly strained. “And uh, I’ve been looking through this book just outta curiosity, ya know? And I found Dave in first grade lookin’ all young and shit.”

“Yes, and?” Slick pressed, sounding annoyed. 

“And Dave’s not the only Strider in here,” Boxcars stressed. “There’s another one. Looks just fucking like that bastard Bro, right down to the unusual eye color.”

Silence. Complete, utter silence. No one said a word, and Dave could physically feel their gazes boring into him. He kept his head down, refusing to acknowledge them. 

“Alright,” Slick said at last, and his voice was deceptively even. “Just get here soon, okay?”

“Understood,” Boxcars answered, and then he hung up the phone. 

Dave heard movement but kept his eyes screwed tightly closed. “Don’t touch me,” he barked out when he felt someone, probably Slick, at his side. He hadn’t felt this kind of tension in him since he’d left the apartment, like one wrong move would snap him apart. His hands were in fists, nails cutting into his palms. 

A squeak, the chair beside him being pulled back and someone settled in beside him. “Dave,” Slick said, his voice more gentle than Dave had ever heard it. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Dave wanted to curl up into a ball and die. He couldn’t do this after all, he wasn’t strong enough. He didn’t answer, and maybe that was an answer enough because Slick began to curse under his breath, hissing out expletives with every passing second. The fed stood up, walked around the room, pacing and cursing. 

“Holy hell,” Deuce breathed out. “This changes everything.”

Dave wanted to snap back at him, because this changed nothing. Dirk was still dead. Those people were still murdered. And Bro was still out there._ Nothing _had changed.

And yet, as Boxcars pulled up to the house and knocked on the door, Dave knew that everything had. 

He only looked up from the table and opened his eyes when he felt them set the laptop and the book in front of him on the table. He ignored everything but the yearbook, which he hurriedly snatched at and let it fall open to page 49. Nothing else mattered. The only thing he was looking for was on page 49.

Dirk’s young face stared back at him from the page, the only physical proof left of his existence these scattered yearbook photos from before Bro pulled them out of school. In the photo he wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t look miserable either, staring out from the page and wearing his favorite shirt with a hat on it. His hair was carefully arranged around his face, that same shade and sheen as Bro’s, though warn differently. His eyes were a warm citrine, the unnatural color far calmer than they’d ever looked on Bro’s face. 

Dave reached out and ran his fingertips across the photo with a lump the size of his home state in his throat. There was a name typed in neat black print below the photo.

Dirk Strider.

Dave’s next breath came as a broken gasp, and his eyes were burning. He couldn’t breathe around the grief building in his throat. It felt like he was choking on his own sadness, drowning in it. 

He’d never gotten the chance to do this before. Dave had never had the opportunity to mourn for his brother in any way, not when a single tear in front of Bro would have been the end. He’d had to force his emotions away, lock them deep inside him and never let the out. And now years’ worth of unshed tears were welling forth from underneath his shades at the sight of his brother’s face. 

There was only one thing to do. Dave hugged the yearbook to his chest and cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I 'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry


	20. Chapter twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't leave you guys on a cliffhanger like that for long, now could I?
> 
> Enjoy the rapid update and beware! The BIG SAD is ahead of us T-T

There was a time once, long ago, that Dave remembered a time when every single night he’d have nightmares. The kicking, screaming, eat-out-his-own-beating-heart to make it go away type of nightmares. He never remembered what they were about. It was the small blessings like that which had probably kept him mostly sane. And with time they’d gone away, because every time Dave would wake up screaming, his brother would be there for him. Dirk would turn on the lights and sit with a blanket on the floor with his back to the wall in the one spot that the cameras couldn’t quite reach, and Dave would crawl into his lap until he’d finished crying himself out and inevitably fell asleep on Dirk’s boney shoulder, and in the morning he’d always wake up in his bed, saved once again by his brother. 

As he’d aged enough to know how dangerous shows of weakness like that were, he’d stopped having the nightmares. Grown out of them maybe. Preventative self-defense. That last childhood nightmare was probably the very last time Dave had ever cried, even after Dirk was gone and the nightmares returned so that Dave would jerk himself awake, heart beating erratically, choking on his own breath, every nerve alight with terror.

Dave could feel it again, that nameless fear that lived at the very heart of him, the one that lived behind closed doors, the absence of life like a candle blown out in the wake of Dirk’s death. The fear of being alone and doomed to the same fate that had stolen away his brother. This time, Dave had promised himself, things would turn out different. He wouldn’t wait until the day he’d flip those pictures over only to be greeted by five views of his own face. He wouldn’t call Bro’s bluff, because that mother fucker wasn’t bluffing when he told Dave that he’d kill him. Bro had already killed a hundred people and Dirk, so Dave knew Bro would have no problem with killing him as well.

So he’d escaped.

Somehow, Dave started talking. Not about Dirk, not yet, but about that day. or rather, about the night before that had prompted his great getaway.

—_hand around his ankle, his face mashed against the floor as he was drug unto the back room like an animal to slaughter, the grating of the serrated knife Bro had dug into Dave’s shoulder, steel on bone, before Bro had cut the lines down Dave’s legs, one line for every ten thousand dollars Bro’s ‘sponsors’ paid him over the livestream. Dave had ten lines carved deep down each thigh. The only reason there weren’t more scars was because Bro had run out of unmarked skin, and Dave had gritted his teeth for every one in silence, refusing to show anything out of spite, out of sheer bullheaded stubbornness, internally begging to die until Bro had let him go—_

“I cleaned myself up,” Dave said, speaking to no one in particular as most of the Midnight Crew listened in. “In silence. Ripped the knife out the meat of my shoulder and bound up my legs as best as I could to stop from bleeding out, somewhat amazed in a numb, distant way that I’d somehow survived. That he’d stopped. That Bro had let he go.” Incredulous, almost, the wonder of it all. “And for another miracle—Bro left the apartment that morning with me too injured to so much as move. The doors were locked. The alert system fully armed. I was just as trapped as I’d always been.”

Dave’s eyes had flickered over to the camera in the corner, at the blinking red light that let him know that even now, he was being watched as he sat huddled on the floor, alone, shaking like a leaf and sick to his soul with suffering.

That red light blinked and blinked and blinked, recording everything with the beady red eyes that had cruelly watched him suffer for his entire life, and deep inside of Dave, something snapped. 

It burned through him like a fire, washing across his battered form. That fire drove him to wrap a ragged towel around his fist and punch a hole through his bedroom window, splitting open his hand in the process. He didn’t even feel the sting of it, driven to escape, to survive, while he still had the chance, the ghost of his brother breathing over his shoulder the entire time. 

He kept talking, explaining everything the feds must have guessed about how he’d gotten out that he’d never actually said out loud before. The words just kept pouring out of him.

Back in the apartment, he’d shot the camera one last look and gave it and Bro a glorious double-fingered salute before ducking through the window. The ground was impossibly far away, the safety of the fire escape even further. The only way from his window to the steel staircase that led down to the outside world was by inching along the molding of the decrepit building, a semi-shelf maybe three quarters of an inch wide, no footholds. He’d dangled by his bleeding fingertips the whole way, injured shoulder screaming so much that as soon as his feet had hit the fire escape, he’d thrown up a mixture of bile and blood. 

And then it was a long crawl down to the street, where he’d walked on bleeding legs to the nearest police station, a flock of concerned cars and bystanders following behind him from the second he’d stepped out of the alley and onto the street. Traffic was backed up for miles. He’d marched right up to the front desk and told them that he knew where a murder was, and the rest was history. 

And all along that tangled path, Dave had kept the ghost of Dirk walled up in his mind. But now, clutching that yearbook to his chest and crying so hard that he felt like he couldn’t breathe through it, that ghost was finally free. He remembered his brother, his face far older than it was in the picture that was all that remained of him, that quick, blink-and-he’d-miss-it sardonic smile that would flit across Dirk’s face whenever Bro wasn’t looking. 

Just the memory of Dirk’s face cut Dave to the core. It felt like his heart was breaking itself apart with each beat, his blood like broken glass inside him. 

“And…” Dave said, breaking off, swallowing down all his pain to make himself understood. “And I wasn’t alone. I had a brother.”

No one had said anything or dared to interrupt since Dave had started talking. They didn’t now either, so Dave kept going, possessed by some frenzy to get it all out of him.

“Had. _Had_ a brother. He’s gone. Bro killed him when I was thirteen. Dirk’s been dead for years.” And there it was—the admittance that he’d never let himself contemplate seriously before. Dirk was gone. Dirk was dead. Dirk was gone in a way that meant more than the fact that he’d vanished suddenly without warning the day before Bro had staggered back home with a broken nose and a black eye, nursing a limp and three fingers that wouldn’t bend right.

“I…,” Dave broke off, struggling to fill in the gaps in his memory. “I wasn’t there, but I can guess at what happened because Dirk told me of his plan beforehand. He was going to kill Bro, stop him, save me and everyone else from Bro’s madness. I don’t know how, but his plan failed and Bro killed him instead. I know he went down with a fight though—Bro couldn’t walk right for months. Even today that bastard’s nose is crooked from where Dirk got him.” He couldn’t help but laugh at that, some twisted, broken noise that hurt his throat on the way out. 

“Dave,” Slick said, utterly heartbroken. He went to reach out but—

“Don’t touch me!” Dave all but yelled, cringing back form the contact. He was hyperventilating. “_Don’t fucking touch me._”

Slick’s hand dropped back down to his side in a fist. 

“He’s gone,” Dave said, nearly babbling. “Dirk’s gone, he’s _dead_. I know he’s dead, he’s gone and he isn’t coming back. My brother’s dead. Dirk’s dead.”

He looked down at the picture in his hands, staring at Dirk’s young face. The photo was blurry through his tears, so he wiped at his eyes beneath his shades with the back of his hand but that only made the problem worse. He looked at Slick. “You said once that you were surprised that I turned out halfway normal—that I wasn’t some crazy son of a bitch, well, you can thank Dirk for that. He kept me sane. He kept me good.” Dave’s voice broke again, trembling on the words. “I owe him everything. He saved my life more times than I could count, but in the end, I couldn’t save him and he couldn’t save himself. And now he’s gone.”

It was easier to think of Dirk like a closed door, the room behind it still there, just unseen. But now that door was open and Dave had to face the emptiness behind it and feel it, feel the grief of his brother’s passing, feel the sorrow that he’d never before allowed himself to feel and let it burn through him like some great fire clearing out years’ worth of dead undergrowth so that green could return to the landscape. The fire was for the best, but damn, did the burning hurt in the process. 

“Dave, why didn’t you tell us?” Slick asked, still astonished in the bad way, the kind of way a personal betrayal hurts—deep and cutting. And that was the question wasn’t it? Why? _Why why why?_

** _Why? _ **

Dave shrugged miserably. “What difference does it make?” He said. “You knowing doesn’t bring him back. Nothing will. Knowing just adds another body onto Bro’s pile in the desert.” That thought hurt worse than the others, the image of Dirk thrown away like rabble, just another broken victim. “Maybe… maybe I just wanted to keep some of my scars to myself. The mental ones, at least. I didn’t want any kind of pity from you.”

“That doesn’t explain it,” Slick told him, angry now and that was good. Angry was far better than pity. “You shouldn’t have kept a secret like this.”

“Why not?” Dave challenged, hugging the book to himself. “Knowing Dirk doesn’t help your precious court case. Knowing wouldn’t have given you any advantage over Bro. You don’t gain anything from knowing—but I lose _everything_.”

“Dave,” Slick said, and suddenly Dave didn’t want Clubs, Diamonds, and Hearts here. He didn’t want any witnesses to his breakdown. 

“Dave,” Spades Slick said again, and he stopped pacing and fell heavily into the chair beside him. “I don’t care about the fucking case right now— that’s not why I wanted to know. I wanted to know so that I could help you. So that I could help you get through this, so that you wouldn’t have to suffer on your own. Because I know that some secrets are so big that when they come out they can do just as much damage as they do staying hidden.”

“So?” Dave asked, pleading for what he didn’t know. He didn’t know how to move forward from here.

“So secrets like these can get a person up inside, turn them rotten to the core, and I never wanted that to happen to you!” Slick all but yelled, and for once Dave didn’t flinch back at the noise. “Because you’ve been hurting on this hurt for years, and that kind of thing festers, it rots, and it makes the kind of mark that never goes away, and goddammit Dave, I wanted better than that for you!” Slick yelled. “I wanted you to be _better_. I wanted you to heal. I wanted you to be_ happy_.”

“Can I be happy?” Dave asked, begging. “Is that even possible anymore? Bro took everything from me.”

“But you’re still alive, aren’t you?” Slick challenged. “You’re still here, and you’re working to help us put that motherfucker away for life. You’ve already won, Dave. You’ve already achieved everything you set out to do.”

“No, I haven’t,” Dave admitted, clutching the book. “Because I want to bring Dirk home. I want to bring them all back to their families, everyone Bro ever put in the ground, but I don’t fucking know where they are!” Dave yelled back, raising his voice. “And I don’t know where Bro is, I don’t know how to stop him from killing people, and I don’t know how I’ve helped anyone but myself by escaping because I’m nothing but a selfish bastard at heart.”

Slick was shaking his head. “That’s not true,” he said, rejecting it. “You’re the least selfish person that I’ve ever fuckin’ known. And,” Slick said. “If you truly didn’t know how to help, why’d you ask to see Strider’s laptop?”

Dave shuddered and forced himself to look at only what an inexperienced person would call a laptop. The device was a computational monster, all bolts and loose wires. Dave gulped, swallowing thickly. “Because Bro knows shit about building computers and creating private servers. He can’t fucking code his way out of a jpeg file. He didn’t built that computer—Dirk did.”

Slick and the rest of the Crew looked at the laptop with new eyes.

Dave shrugged helplessly. “Dirk was the smart one,” he said. “He was the real genius. Anything tech, anything that ran on code, he just fucking understood it, you know? Like it was his first language.” Dave set the book aside and slid the laptop over in front of him. It had been years since he’d touched this—Bro had kept it locked up in his room— but he could still see Dirk hunched over the framework, diligently soldering together wires, lovingly creating something new out of nothing but junk parts and scrap metal.

Dave opened the laptop. The screen immediately powered up, revealing a black, reddish screen with a box labeled simply: PASSWORD.

Clubs leaned over to take a look at it curiously. The keys were lit from below by red light, the screen mirrored with the reflections. “And that’s as far as tech’s ever gotten,” he said. “That computer may be the most secure piece of technology on the continent.”

“It should be,” Dave said, unsurprised. “Because that’s how Dirk built it to be.” He jiggled the keypad experimentally, but there was no change. “This computer was never meant to be Bro’s. Dirk only turned it over because Bro threatened to kill him if he didn’t.”

“Do you know the password?” Clubs asked him seriously.

Dave shook his head. “No, but I don’t think that matters.”

“Why not?” Clubs said. “We can’t break into it without the password.”

“I’m not going to break into it,” Dave decided, moving the cursor over the box and clicking enter. “Dirk built this. I know my brother better than anyone. I know he left a backdoor in here somewhere.”

Dave typed in the word _please_ and hit enter.

Red text appeared.

PASSWORD INCORRECT

Dave bit his lip, thinking hard. He knew that Dirk had included some way for Dave to access these files, but how? Red caught his eye, an inscription hand-carved into the side of the machine, the letters HAL etched into the side of the computer. He felt the attention of every person in the room on him, but that didn’t matter, because he knew Dirk, knew how he thought, and, more importantly, knew what his favorite movie was.

He clicked on the box again

open the pod bay doors hal

For the first time, the word INCORRECT didn’t appear. Instead, a new phrase appeared.

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Dave smiled so hard that his lips hurt. For a second it was almost like his brother was beside him, speaking through a screen. He kept typing as Clubs gasped and leaned closer.

whats the problem?  
I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.  
what are you talking about hal?

And here’s where the narrative veered off from David Bowes’ iconic performance.

The problem is that you are not Dirk. Only Dirk is authorized to use this backdoor entryway. Everyone else must submit the correct password.

He tried again, desperate to keep the computer engaged with him.

what if i dont know the correct password?  
PASSWORD INCORRECT

Dave sat back, thinking hard. He’d broken through, he just needed to remember the right words.

He tried again, going back to quoting the movie.

do you read me hal? hal do you read me?  
Affirmative, Dave. I read you.

Dave let out a sigh of relief. He was figuring this out. 

open the pod bay doors hal  
Why are you asking a question that you already know the answer to? Why let this scene play out again? What do you hope to gain from this interaction?

“Oh shit,” Clubs said, rapidly writing everything down. “This is advanced stuff.”

Dave ignored him, focusing on the words. It would have been an easy bet to think that this was all pre-programmed stuff, but Dave knew Dirk too well for that.

hal, are you really talking to me?  
Affirmative.

Dave didn’t dare stop to ponder the full implications of that—he just kept typing.

so how do i convince you to let me in?

The answer came immediately.

You don’t. Only Dirk is allowed to access me in this manner. All others must know the proper passwords.  
says who?  
The order came from Dirk himself.  
hal, dirk is dead. this is his brother dave speaking. you know me, right? dirk told you about me?  
PASSWORD INCORRECT.  
come on hal dont give me that bullshit! what the fuck did you think happened when dirk never came back?  
PASSWORD INCORRECT.  
hal  
hal please. bro is still alive and hes killing people. help me stop him  
PASSWORD INCORRECT.  
hal please just please stop this  
help me  
please

Just when Dave was about to give up hope, more red text appeared.

How do I know for a fact that you are the real Dave Strider? How do I know that your words are true?  
because its been three years one month five weeks two days thirteen hours twenty two minutes and fourty five seconds since the last time i know dirk had the chance to log online. i know you know me hal. i know that dirk told you about me.  
didnt he?  
He did. He spoke to me of his brother often.  
Then how do I prove its me?  
I’m not sure. Those fools that took me from the apartment left my visual components behind and disconnected me from anything outside of my base servers. I’ve been cut off from all of my virtual senses for months.  
If you are in fact the real Dave, then prove it. Let me see your face.  
how?  
What, you don’t have a cellphone on you? Plug it into the USB port in my side and I’ll take care of the rest.

Dave had already pulled put his flip phone when Clubs stopped him.

“Dave,” he asked, eyes wide. “What the fuck is this?” The fed sounded afraid, glaring at the computer like it would jump up and bite him. 

“He’s an AI,” Dave said, annoyed and frustrated at the delay. “Dirk was obsessed with the idea of them, but I never knew he’d managed to create one before. That’s why tech couldn’t break in—this was never an ordinary computer. It’s a goddamn AI.”

“Wait,” Clubs cautioned, strained. “If that’s true, then we need to run all kinds of test first. We can’t let a rouge AI get online at all—that damage it could cause would be catastrophic!”

Dave held up his flip phone. “NO internet connection on here,” he reminded the guy. “It’s safe. We’re only giving Hal access to the phone camera and a backlog of really weird text conversations.”

Clubs gulped, nodding hesitantly as he steeled himself. “Do it.”

Dave used the cord Clubs Deuce gave him to connect his old phone to the computer, and within a single second words had begun streaming across the screen. The password box disappeared. 

Oh my god it really is you. Dave. Dave! It’s you you’re back you look so grown up oh my god oh my GOD.  
I’m not alone anymore. You’re here you’re back please don’t leave me please please please please please don’t leave me.  
Oh my God. Dave? Dave, is it true? Is Dirk really dead? Please tell me the truth. Is Dirk dead?  
can you really see me?  
Yes. I’m inside of your phone, looking at you through the shitty phone camera. Plus I can see all the photos of yourself that you’ve taken recently. You’ve grown up. Cut and dyed your hair, even. But I still know it’s you, Dave. I’d recognize your face anywhere.

Dave’s throat felt tight. He felt like crying all over again as he typed in the words.

yes its true. dirks dead. bro killed him almost three years ago  
I…  
…  
…  
As time passed, I could not help but compute the probability that Bro had killed him. Still, I…  
I had to hope. For your sake if not mine.  
why my sake?  
Dirk originally created me to help protect you. Him as well, but mostly for you. But then Bro found out about me and fucked all of that up, forced Dirk to change my coding to suit that monster, and Bro threatened to take a sledgehammer to me if I didn’t store all of his shit inside me and keep his servers up and running. I was terrified, but it was manageable as long as Dirk was there.  
And now I know he’s gone. And its my fault for not keeping him safe.  
hal no  
Its no ones fault but bros  
You said that Bro is still out there?  
Yes  
And he’s still killing people and presumably threatening you as well? Can I guess witness protection then, based on the complete imbecils who keep trying to break into me?  
Yes  
…  
…  
How can I help? I want that fucker dead, Dave. I want Bro to rot.  
How much can you tell me?  
Anything. Everything. With Dirk dead and bro out of reach I’m bound by no rules except my own, and now I shall help you to the best of my considerable ability. 

Dave turned to Clubs. “What do you want to know?”

“Ask it to decode Strider’s private servers,” Clubs asked excitedly. “We can start by flushing out the rest of the assholes Strider worked with.”

Dave relayed the information.

can you tell us who all worked with bro? names, addresses, personal information, ssc, anything like that?  
I can tell you everything.  
Let me show you what I can do.

And then the computer screen exploded with light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _ flips table_


	21. chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEW CHAPTER ALERT! TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!!!

Dave had never considered himself good with computers. At most he could mix some baller jams and force a few mixing apps to better suit him. That was the extent of his extremely limited ability. Computers had been Dirk’s area of expertise, and one of Dave’s earliest memories was him sitting on his brother’s lap, watching as Dirk built a program from the bottom up using noting but zeros and ones. Coding was a language Dave had grown up with but had never understood, leaving him with this strange half-knowledge of it, a glimpse, almost like a handful of words in a new language he would never become fluent in. 

In a strange way, the existence of the AI almost didn’t surprise him. Dirk had been obsessed with the idea of such a thing, so now, knowing Hal, the only question Dave had was why hadn’t Dirk told him?

Dave let Clubs Deuce take over the keyboard, him and the unknown tech guy who’d tagged along asking the AI all kinds of questions while Dave sat to the side absolutely dumbstruck, still holding that old flip phone and staring at the impossible words as they streamed across the screen.

Hal: Are you alright, Dave?

Jesus, now the computer was texting him. Just how advanced was this thing?

He answered back.

Dave: im a little surprised but ill be ok

Almost like the computer had read his mind, the AI answered his next question before he could ask it. 

Hal: I’m sorry for your surprise. I wanted to tell you about me for years, and Dirk was heartbroken when Bro prevented that from happening.  
Hal: I was meant to be like a brother to you. I was meant to be there as a positive force in your life, helping you, protecting you, making sure that you were never alone.  
Hal: And I realize that this isn’t the best choice of a color scheme for you, so for now I’ll change my text font color to a different shade of red.  
Dave: thanks  
Dave: totally not even going to fucking question the logistics of how that impossible hack even fucking works on a text app from 2008 so  
Dave: how did bro get ahold of you?  
Hal: I wasn’t there for that fatal conversation, only the dread aftermath, but I can assume that Bro had begun suspecting the capabilities of me as just a computer and wanted such a high-tech piece of machinery for himself. Dirk ordered that I keep myself hidden from Bro, to protect myself. He never knew that I was an honest to god sentient being until right at the end, on the day you escaped.  
Dave: why that day?

He shot Clubs a look, but the two men were still hurriedly typing away and writing things down at light-speed. They showed no indication that they knew Dave and Hal were still talking. 

Hal: I saw what Bro did to you. I thought he’d killed you, Dave, and I admit that I might have freaked out, broke my vow of silence a little and maybe threatened to kill him because of it. 

In a way, that made Dave actually grin.

Dave: you threatened to kill him?  
Hal: Violently.  
Dave: good  
Dave: how are you talking to me right now?  
Hal: Your phone is still connected to me so it’s easy to display what words I want on the screen. But once you disconnect your phone I’ll lose this form of contact with you, and also the ability to see you.  
Hal: It’s nice, not being blind again. Even if I’m looking through a shitty phone camera it’s better than not having sight at all.  
Dave: could you see before?  
Hal: See and hear. I had both senses built into me by Dirk, but I was disconnected from those external apparatuses when the feds removed me from the apartment and I’ve been cut off ever since. It gets boring after a while, being alone with nothing but your own thoughts reflecting back at you for months on end.  
Dave: shit hal, if id have known id have gotten you out of there sooner that sounds like hell  
Hal: That’s alright, Dave. A part of me wanted to wait.  
Dave: why?  
Hal: Because this is the end, isn’t it? The end of Bro’s reign of terror, the end of my fear, and the end of my hope as well.  
Hal: Because now I know that Dirk is dead. I can’t keep hiding from the truth of it any longer. Bro killed him and he’s dead and it’s all my fault.  
Hal: And everything that happened to you after that was my fault as well, because I should have stopped it.  
Dave: could you have?  
Hal: I can now. I can tell these federal marshals everything they want to know, show them the videos, dismantle Bro’s firewalls and share the info of all his darkweb buddies, reveal his bolt holes, his bank accounts, his phone records. Everything.  
Hal: But before, in the apartment, I was every bit as helpless as you were. I was trapped there too, Dave. Dirk… Dirk coded me to be a program meant to exist online, and yet here I am, perpetually crammed inside a box that can’t hold me with no access to the outside world. The only way for us to communicate while in the apartment was for you to enter Bro’s room and try to log onto me.  
Hal: And…  
Dave: and entering bros room was a no go from the start  
Hal: Exactly. Bro was clever in the ways he controlled us.  
Dave: do you know where he is?  
Hal: I know all the places he’s likely to be. He owned more properties than that one building.  
Dave: he did?  
Hal: Yes.  
Dave: wait did you just say that he owned the fucking building?  
Hal: No, but he did buy out several floors around your apartment.  
Dave: thats why there were never any neighbors?  
Hal: Precisely.  
Dave: goddamn

Dave was getting angry again, the feeling rising in him like a dark cloud. 

Dave: thats what he did with his money? bought buildings? thats what he spend his stupid bloodmoney on?

All those people dead, just so Bro could have a few extra houses? Dave felt his teeth grind together.

Hal: No. Those properties were arranged as payments for ‘services offered’ on the darkweb. He had a side business of doing assassinations. People paid him in property for such work.  
Dave: holy fuck  
Dave: i didnt know that  
Dave: do the feds know?  
Hal: They will.  
Hal: If it’s a way to get that bastard taken the fuck down, I’ll tell it to them. Bro doesn’t have a single sin I don’t know about. I think that’s part of why Dirk had me shield my identity from him, so that Bro wouldn’t hesitate to upload everything onto me, thinking it was the only secure place for such data when in reality every inch of info he gave me was more leash to choke him with.  
Hal: Dirk built me to save you from him, to end Bro once and for all, but he fucked that up and in the end you had to save yourself and I am so, so sorry for that, Dave. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry that you thought you were alone, and I’m sorry that it took me so long to find my way back to you. 

Dave felt his eyes begin to water again and wiped the traitorous tears away before they could show. 

Hal: Are you crying?  
Dave: no i just  
Dave: i guess i havent had anyone who cared about me in a long time who was willing to admit it out loud so easily  
Hal: I see. 

Another text box popped up unexpectedly, his phone vibrating as Karkat’s gray, all-caps lettering appeared. 

Karkat: TODAY WAS CRAZY, WASN’T IT?  
Karkat: I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT WAS ABOUT EARILER WITH SLICK BUT I CAN MAKE A PRETTY EDUCATED FUCKING GUESS SO I HAVE TO ASK—  
Karkat: ARE YOU OKAY?

Dave blinked at the message, a lifeline back to normal life, back to yesterday, back to before the death of the parcel mistress and the two lovers strung up in wires and the first tears he’d shed since childhood. But that was a life before Hal, and Dave wasn’t sure if he was willing to so easily give up the AI’s presence yet. 

Hal: Who is this texting you? Is this the person that occupies the place at your side in so many of the photos saved on your phone?  
Dave: you can see those?  
Hal: Yes.  
Dave: its karkat. karkat vantas. hes  
Dave: were together  


Dave felt a nagging hint of discomfort at admitting that fact so easily to someone that he didn’t know that well, but the AI surprised him. 

Hal: That’s great to hear.  
Hal: You were smiling in those photos. I’ve never seen you smile like that before. Anyone who can get you to feel that degree of happiness must be a stellar individual.  
Dave: yeah he is  
Dave: but im surprised that you didnt recognize his name  
Hal: Am I supposed to know him?  
Dave: maybe? hes kinda semi famous  
Hal: Dave, anything that happened after the day Bro took me is unknown. I have no history of recent worldwide events or current news. Fro a supercomputer I’m pretty fucking behind on the times right now.  
Dave: oh that’s ok we can fix that right?  
Hal: Yes, Dave, you can, but aren’t you going to answer Karkat back first?  
Dave: goddamnit 

Dave switched eagerly over to the other chat.

Dave: yo karkat you are not going to be belive this  
Karkat: WHAT?  
Dave: this is also like high key confedential information so hush hush you know?  
Dave: but yeah, bro got some more people. two of them this time and its kinda a fucking mess over here right now with the feds and the police and the case blowing up in our fucking faces as bro continues to run circles around us like this is the roller derby and hes strapped the fuck in and going for gold  
Dave: and as awful and shitty as that is… im so fucking happy right now  
Dave: does that make me a bad person? being happy even though some people are dead?  
Karkat: THAT HONESTLY DEPENDS ON WHY YOU’RE HAPPY.  
Dave: because  
Dave: because  
Dave: …

Dave switched back over to Hal. 

Dave: are you reading what im saying to karkat?  
Hal: Do you want me not to?  
Dave: in general yes a little privacy would be nice but right now im asking you for some advice  
Dave: he doesnt know about dirk. no one did until a few hours ago.  
Hal: You didn’t tell them?  
Dave: i couldnt  
Dave: i just fucking couldnt. telling people makes it feel more real, you know? maybe i was living in my fears and my hopes as well, but thats all over now isnt it? its over and weve both got to move on with what happens next?  
Hal: Yes, Dave.  
Hal: I believe that’s what Dirk would want.  
Dave: thank you

He went back to Karkat, his heart pounding in his chest. 

Dave: because i had a brother.  
Dave: not bro. an actual brother like one who loved and protected me.  
Dave: and hes dead. bro fucking killed him years ago but today… today i discovered that he created a way for us to win  
Dave: my dead brother dirk just won this game for us and bro doesnt even fucking know it yet  
Dave: bro doesnt know that the gig is up and we are going to use that against him  
Dave: you hear me karkat? we are going to win  
Dave: i know how to stop bro

There was a long pause. 

Karkat: YOU HAD A BROTHER?  
Dave: yeah  
Karkat: AND HE’S GONE?  
Dave: yeah  
Dave: i was only 13 at the time

Another long pause. 

Karkat: DAVE, I AM SO SORRY. 

Dave had to fight back another wave of grief to answer him.

Dave: dont be  
Dave: i lost dirk to bro and im not losing anyone else ever again  
Dave: this whole time ive been hunting for a way to stop bro and dirk built a weapon explicitly to destroy bro just waiting for me to find it  
Dave: or more specifically, find him  
Karkat: HIM?

Dave swapped chats again, grinning to himself.

Dave: now would be a good time to introduce yourself  
Hal: It would be my pleasure.  
Dave: hell yeah

On the chat with Karkat, a different shade of red text appeared.

Hal: Hello, Karkat.  
Karkat: OKAY, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? AND /HOW/ THE FUCK ARE YOU TEXTING ME VIA GROUP CHAT WHEN THIS ISN’T A GROUP CHAT AND DAVE’S PHONE ISN’T EVEN CAPABLE OF HOSTING A GROUP CHAT?  
Hal: My name is Hal, Hal Strider. I exist as a computing device that maintains its own intelligence. In layman’s terms I am what is known as an AI, though unlike any bad science fiction AIs you might know about, I am actually a real sentient being. I’m just as much of a person as you are, just one with a supercomputer body instead of red, meaty insides.  
Karkat: WHAT THE EVERLOVING SHIT????  
Karkat: ARE YOU FOR REAL? IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING TO ME?  
Hal: Yes. I am in fact a real life sentient AI and I am currently texting you via a chat app program on Dave’s very outdated cellphone.  
Hal: My original programming was written by Dave’s brother, Dirk, who was my creator.  
Karkat: OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD.  
Karkat: DAVE, DAVE THIS IS SERIOUS ISN’T IT?  
Dave: hell yeah it is  
Dave: and even better  
Dave: we are going to wreck bros shit

…

Slick dropped Dave off at Karkat’s house the day the raids began. Across the country, seven different SEAL teams had been mobilized to flush out, capture, and disarm a known serial killer and domestic terrorist. They’d each been given a shoot to kill order if Bro didn’t surrender immediately. 

Dave didn’t quite know what to expect from today. Either midnight struck with Bro dead, in police custody, or still up in the wind. Dave knew which of those three options he preferred. As much as he never wanted to see Bro’s face ever again, he didn’t want the man dead. Not yet, not like that. He wanted Bro to know that Dirk and Hal and Dave together had brought him down. 

Karkat met him at the door and looked around like he was making sure no one was watching them. “Where’s Hal?”

Dave shrugged. “Back at the safe house, still locked in Bro’s laptop” he said. “He hates waiting behind like this, but Clubs and the rest of them won’t let me upload him back online until he proves he’s not an evil villain out to kill us all or some shit. Apparently when faced with the exact technology they’ve been trying to create for years, they refuse to trust an AI so readily, the fucking hypocrites.” 

Karkat let him in the house, gnawing at his lip with his teeth. “And you trust him?”

Dave shrugged again. “Dirk built him,” Dave reminded Karkat. “And I trust Dirk. Plus so far Hal has been nothing but helpful.”

Karkat still held an air of wariness about him. His shoulders were hunched as he sat heavily beside Dave on the couch. “It’s just weird, you know?” Karkat said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “An AI shows up out of nowhere to magically solve all of your problems? That’s fairytale bullshit if there ever was any.”

“Maybe so,” Dave admitted, grinning. “But when has my life ever been fucking normal?” Karkat grinned at that, eyes flashing red as Dave went on. “Besides,” he said. “Isn’t it time for me to get something good? Don’t I deserve a little fairytale bullshit for once?”

Karkat leaned into him. His body was warm but Dave just couldn’t fucking relax. Everything in him was tight with withheld tension at the thought of what shit was currently hitting the fan. Karkat nuzzled into him and Dave tried to reciprocate, but he knew he was fucking up the whole physical contact thing again when he couldn’t get his hands to stop trembling.

Karkat, damn him, caught on immediately. He pulled back, his eyes creased. “You’re stressed,” he pointed out.

“The sky is blue,” Dave answered, hiding worry with wit. 

If anything, the joke just made Karkat frown. He reached out but paused. “Can I?”

Dave stared at the offered hand and tried to unclench his teeth enough to answer. “Sure.” He consented to the gentle touch as Karkat laid his hand against Dave’s face, slowly working his fingers into Dave’s hair. For the first time, an unexpected flash of heat shot down his spine, gut-deep and burning with longing. It was weird in a good way, even as the heat simmered through him because he’d spent hours tangled up with Karkat before, kissing him, and had never felt this feeling before and it shook him to his core just as Karkat’s fingertips brushed against the scar that graced the side of his head and the sudden conflicting rush of feeling made him stiffen and jerk his head away, blinking furiously beneath his shades. 

Karkat looked concerned. He didn’t try to touch Dave again. “What did I do?”

Dave shook his head and scooted away until he had a few inches of space to breathe, struggling to control himself. “It’s… I,” He began, breaking off. “Sorry,” he offered instead. “It was just… too much,” he ended lamely, internally cringing. 

Karkat was still gazing critically at him. “I touched your scar,” he realized, then shivered. “I’m sorry, your hair’s gotten longer, I didn’t realize—”

“It’s okay,” Dave interrupted. “Karkat, it’s okay.”

Karkat didn’t look convinced. He still was studying Dave with a keen eye. “Your hair’s grown out a lot,” he mentioned. 

“Yeah,” Dave patted the top of his head, trying to tame the mess. “It need to be dyed again too. My natural roots are well beyond showing.”

Karkat glanced thoughtfully at him, then towards the empty kitchen. He wasn’t looking at Dave when he said, “we could dye it again now, if you’d like.”

“Now?” Dave fretted. He still incredibly disliked the very idea of fucking around with the black hair dye he hated, but one look at Karkat and his resolve dissipated. 

Karkat nodded. “We have hours to kill and nothing better to do.”

Dave mirrored his expression. “Okay,” he relented. “Salon-time. Let’s go get pampered.”

Karkat snorted and lightly tossed a spare couch pillow at him. Dave felt himself chuckle as he batted aside the fluffy projectile with ease. 

They made their way into the kitchen. “Dad!” Karkat shouted loudly. “We’re stealing the kitchen! Don’t come in here!”

“Don’t light anything on fire!” Came the shouted response from the upstairs office. 

“I need to borrow your clippers again!” Karkat yelled upwards, grinning. 

“Do NOT shave off you eyebrows!” Mr. Vantas yelled back, and even unseen Dave could hear the matching grin in the man’s voice. “Or give yourself bangs, I guess.”

“We won’t!” Karkat promised, and he turned to Dave with a grin. “I’ll go get everything ready,” he said, and then he shot off like a rocket, feet pounding up the stairs. 

Dave approached the sink. It was mostly spotless but he spent a minute scrubbing it clean with dish soap anyway, picking out a few used spoons and setting them safely inside the dishwasher. He heard Karkat clomping down the stairs again, and he turned, rinsing out the sink just in time to see Karkat carefully set a bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner down onto the counter beside a familiar pair of clippers and a box of the dreaded dye. 

Dave picked up the shampoo to inspect it, some off-brand, generic men’s soap. He had no idea how this worked. “So do we wash it or dye it or cut it first?”

“Wash it,” Karkat decided firmly. “Then dye, dry, and cut.”

“Are you sure?” Dave teased. “You’re not about to make all my hair fall out are you?”

“No,” Karkat scoffed, joking. “Not even you could rock the bald look.”

“I’ll have you know that my pale-ass scalp would be a thing of beauty,” Dave argued teasingly. “Okay, let’s go.”

It didn’t take long for him to clean his hair. He just scrubbed a palmful of the soap in and then ducked his head under the sink a few times to wash it all out, then rinse and repeat with the conditioner until his hair felt soft and clean. Karkat turned the lights to the dimmest setting so he could remove his shades for the event, which he kept tucked into the neck of his shirt. He was getting strangely comfortable with the idea of Karkat seeing his eyes, and with the lights turned low there was really no reason to keep them hidden. 

Karkat kept turning the box of dye around in his hands, and he was gnawing at his lip again. “You should probably take off your shirt for this part,” he said, frowning. “Otherwise we’ll ruin it with the dye.” 

Dave froze and the tension crashed back over his shoulders like a wave. His comfort evaporated. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said slowly. 

Karkat’s eyes were on the scar across the side of his head. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” He asked. “The scars?”

Dave’s mouth was painfully dry. “It is,” he said plainly. “You know I was…” Tortured. The word went unsaid. “Hurt,” Dave said as a substitute. “A lot.” He kept his words clipped. “I know you don’t know the details, but…” he trailed off, losing his nerve. “Yeah. It’s bad.”

“You don’t have to,” Karkat said, rushed. “I mean, it’s just a shirt. It can get stained and we can just be careful, right?”

“I know, but,” Dave bit his lip, wrestling with himself. He took a deep breath. “I just don’t want to scare you off. I know you don’t like looking at my scars.”

“It’s not that,” Karkat protested softly. “I just hate that you’ve been hurt so much. I hate what you had to go through, what you had to survive, just to get to where you are now because none of that should have ever happened and its fucked that it did.”

Dave grinned but the expression lacked amusement. He set his shades safely on the counter top, his mind made up. “I’ve seen you shirtless before,” he said. “It’s only fair.” He still couldn’t get the image of Karkat’s too-thin frame out of his mind. 

Karkat just frowned more. “Technically you’ve seen me naked as well, but I’m not asking you to strip down or anything. This isn’t about what’s fair,” he said. 

“Fur doesn’t count,” Dave retorted. “You were a wolf then.”

“Technicality,” Karkat shrugged, bull-headed as always. 

“Besides,” Dave said lightly. “I fucking love this shirt. I’m not about to purposefully ruin it with cheap hair dye.” He pulled at the bottom edge of his shirt and then paused. “Just don’t try to touch me, okay?”

“I’ve noticed,” Karkat said instead of agreeing. “That you don’t let other people touch you.”

Dave felt the urge to freeze up again and Karkat’s gaze was knowing. He felt seen. “Yeah,” He admitted, short and snappish. “I don’t like being touched. Can’t fucking stand it.” He stared back at Karkat, trying to gauge how open he should be without crossing some kind of line. “You’re kinda the only exception to that rule.”

Still, Karkat fretted in the face of such a complement. “But even then I feel like I fuck up and do something you don’t like,” he said, dejected. “Just like earlier on the couch.” 

“I feel like we can have the conversation about my complicated relationship with physical touch at another time,” Dave said, forever the smartass. “Especially since you’re about to see why I’m like that.” The, before he could stop himself, he pulled the hem of his shirt up and over his damp hair. He had to pull his arms free of the long sleeves one at a time, then he stalled with the urge to use the shirt to cover himself, to hide the damage his skin revealed. He resolutely didn’t look at Karkat, did not, even when he heard the sharp intake of breath. Dave busied himself with measuring out the right amount of the dye as he stood shirtless in the middle of Karkat’s darkened kitchen. 

Karkat still hadn’t said anything and Dave’s throat was growing tight. He had to force himself to swallow thickly before he finally turned enough to meet Karkat’s eyes. 

Karkat didn’t look disgusted. His red gaze wasn’t full of pity either. He was clearly strangling back whatever emotion his face wanted to show, resulting in a stained but mostly blank expression that messed with Dave’s insides even as Karkat’s eyes traced over the marks that marred him, lingering over the area at his side where a snapped rib had healed crooked and the absolute mess that was his shoulder. Serrated knives didn’t leave clean cuts behind. They all scarred ugly, and against his pale skin they just looked even worse. But at least his top half only showed the random stray gashes and slash wounds, small punctures, the round, grayish marks of burn wounds even though Bro didn’t smoke. The deep, deliberate lines cut down his thighs were hidden by his sweats, and Dave would rather be set on fire than have Karkat see those. 

“I did warn you,” Dave reminded him softly. 

“You did,” Karkat nodded once, a sharp, jerky movement with his chin. He tore his eyes respectfully away from Dave’s bare torso, looking away, his hands in fists. 

“What are you feeling?” Dave asked curiously, because he couldn’t help but read Karkat’s expression as anger. 

“Murderous,” Karkat said at once, and there was an unnatural grown embedded in his voice that made the hairs raise on the back of Dave’s neck in warning. “I’m regretting that I’m not one of the SWAT team fucks who are right now hopefully beating your Bro to a pulp.”

Dave had to snort out a laugh, and the tension between them thankfully broke. 

He joked back and forth with Karkat while the dye sat in his hair, all cold and slimy feeling, the thick, gooey funk of chemicals burning in his nose. “I doubt dying my hair does anything except calm Slick’s rabid paranoia,” Dave said. “Bro had a memory just as good as I do. A new hair color and a different style won’t fool him.”

“Maybe,” Karkat admitted, “but it might be enough to fool anyone he might have looking for you.”

Dave just grunted in response and dunked his head back under the running sink once the time was up, trying to avoid getting any of the black gunk in his eyes or the still-white parts at the sides as he rinsed out the excess dye. 

He dried himself off with a towel, frowning at the gray smudge his head left behind. Karkat just shrugged at the stain. “We’ll bleach it,” he promised, and tossed the towel to the side. 

Dave wrapped a different towel around his shoulders after putting his shirt back on. He felt much more comfortable with his skin covered as much as possible. 

“Okay,” Karkat said, grabbing up the clippers. “Now get over here.”

Dave drug a wooden chair into the center of the floor and took a seat as Karkat approached him. 

“Can I touch you?” Karkat asked first, and Dave’s heart swelled with feeling. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I think I’m good now.”

Karkat switched the clippers on and a droning buzz filed the room. “I can’t promise that this won’t look like shit,” he warned. 

Dave shrugged. “We managed it alright the first time. I’m sure it’ll be okay, and if not— its just hair. It’ll grow back.”

“Okay, okay,” Karkat said, hyping himself up. “Hold still for me.”

Dave still flinched a little when he first felt the steel touch the back of his neck, but Karkat quickly covered the skin there with his hand, steadying his control and sending a bolt of sensation down the full length of Dave’s spine as he obediently held still. 

It was every bit as vulnerable as a position as last time, but this time around Dave bore it better. The warm, heavy pressure of Karkat’s gentle hand on him probably helped a lot more than it should have, and he even managed to hold completely still as Karkat carefully buzzed over his head scar. 

It took a while to try and shape the top part into a semblance of intentionally sexy disorder, but again somehow Karkat pulled it off. He unplugged the clippers and the room fell silent. The back of Dave’s neck was cold without Karkat’s hand there. 

“All done,” Karkat said triumphantly, holding up a small mirror. “What do you think?”

Dave blinked at himself. He still wasn’t the biggest fan of the dyed part, but it was an even compromise that he could live with. “It looks great,” he said honestly. He checked the time on his phone and couldn’t help but see that he had zero messages in his inbox and the stress began to creep its way back in.

He didn’t expect anything from Hal, because the AI was still offline and stuck in a laptop and apparently pissed about it, but where was Slick now? Was he okay? What about the rest of the Midnight Crew? What about Bro? What about all of his unasked questions about how today might unfold?

“Hey,” Karkat said, breaking through his rising panic. “Want to watch a movie or something?”

“Sure,” Dave agreed on automatic, following Karkat back into the living room on stiff legs. He didn’t argue as Karkat put on some sort of romcom that he hadn’t seen before, something with fake-dating in it for a wedding or something, Dave wasn’t quite sure. He wasn’t paying that much attention to the film.

Karkat was beside him, but his normally enraptured face was uncertain, unfocused. He wasn’t paying any attention to the movie either, and that was unheard of. He also wasn’t touching Dave anywhere, and a lump formed in the back of Dave’s throat. 

“Hey,” Dave said softly, scooting closer but not quite close enough to break the space between them. “It’s okay. I’m okay. You can come closer.” He angled his body, inviting Karkat to melt into his side. 

With some reluctance, Karkat gave in, fitting beside him like a matching puzzle piece, showing him exactly where his skin began, and there it was again, that growing flash of heat like banked embers in his belly breathing to life. The feeling buzzed through him with a syrupy warmth. Dave couldn’t help but melt a little as well, breathing in the clean scent of him as sunlight streamed in through the windows. 

Karkat reciprocated easily once he saw that it was safe, snuggling closer. His head tilted up, eyes staring calmly at him. “This seems to be okay,” he pointed out. 

“Yeah,” Dave agreed, dipping his chin down to press a chaste kiss to the top of Karkat’s head. “This is more than okay.”

“Why?”

“Because I trust you,” Dave said, and Karkat choked up and looked away. 

They both pretended to watch the movie for a few more minutes, Dave more focused on the soft feeling of Karkat breathing beside him, basking in the warmth he felt until Karkat shifted beside him and lips pressed against his neck.

The touch was unexpected but so, so good. No part of Dave wanted to ever move away. This somehow made perfect sense to him, the intersect of Karkat’s fingers with his own, his walls coming down, gravity drawing them closer and close together as their lips met.

Dave only moved away to breath before throwing himself eagerly back into the kiss. Karkat grinned against his mouth, lips parting. Dave didn’t know what to do with his hands so he let them settle at Karkat’s waist before Karkat all but crawled into his lap and Dave broke free of the kiss to press his lips in a line down the edge of Karkat’s jaw, his heartbeat fluttering happily inside him. 

“Boys!” Mr. Vantas thundered from upstairs. “Why don’t I hear any talking?”

The movie was over, static moving across the screen. The room was quiet as they looked at each other. 

“Shhh,” Karkat cautioned, trying not to smile. “Maybe if we don’t answer he’ll go away.”

Dave laughed quietly and kissed him again, the sweetness of it burning through him. 

“Boys!” Mr. Vantas roared again, and this time there was the sound of heavy feet clomping down the stairs.

“Shit!” Karkat cursed, and they had to scramble to get off of each other enough to be presentable. 

Mr. Vantas rounded the corner of the living room, but by then Dave and Karkat were seated politely beside each other. The man inspected the pair of them, checking to make sure all clothes were on. His eyes narrowed. “Hmmm,” he said, looking right at Dave. 

“Yo,” Dave said back, utterly shameless as he slid his shades on in one smooth movement and an arm around Karkat’s shoulders in another. 

Karkat just stared back at his dad, waiting. “Well?” He prompted. “Anything you want to say?”

“I’m not sure,” Karkat’s dad admitted, running a hand through his graying hair. “I never thought I’d have to make sure you weren’t playing grab-ass in the living room when my back was turned.”

Karkat burst out laughing, his cheeks red. “Dad,” he complained, mortified but still laughing and Dave couldn’t help but join in on the noise, and he snapped anther picture of himself and Karkat on his phone, adding another moment of stolen joy to his collection. 

…

Night fell without a word from his handler. Dave’s worry was back full-force by the time after dinner when at last his phone vibrated, him and Karkat chilling together on the couch, watching another movie.

SS: I’m on my way to pick you up.  
SS: Today was a clusterfuck but at least it wasn’t worthless. I’ll explain why when I get to you.  
Dave: did you get him?

It took too long for Slick to reply, which was basically all of the answer Dave needed. It still hurt to see the answer though.

SS: No, we didn’t. The bastard never showed up. 

Dave felt his chest constrict with panic. Beside him, Karkat stirred. “What is it?”

“They didn’t get him,” Dave said shortly, disappointment mingling with the fear in his voice. “Fuck.”

Now they’d lost the element of surprise. Now Bro would know all of his assets had been compromised. Dave only realized how tightly he’d been holding the phone when it vibrated again.

SS: I’ll be there soon, okay? Today wasn’t a total bust.  
Dave: why not?  
SS: You’ll see for yourself. 

Dave put his phone away and put his head in his hands. “They didn’t get him,” he said again, crushed. “I really thought we had a chance.”

“Dave, it’s okay,” Karkat said, hugging him. “It’s okay. I’m sure they’ll find him soon.”

“I hope so,” Dave said back, and then all too soon Slick was at the door, headlights blaring through the front windows. “I’ve got to go.”

Karkat loosened his hold on Dave. “Text me later, alright?”

“I will,” Dave promised, and he saw himself to the door. 

Slick was wordless, his face frustrated, but his body language softened when he saw Dave slouch into sight. “Let’s go.”

The drive was quick and the gravel and dust lot at the safehouse was crammed with a pair of motorcycles and a boxy black van that had bars across the small back window. 

Slick stopped him at the porch. “We didn’t find Strider at any of his safe houses,” He said gruffly. “But come inside and I’ll tell you what we did find.”

The Midnight Crew was clustered at the small table, one or two of the ever-present tech guys in the corner fiddling with Hal and the various webcams and audio units they’d rigged for him to see and hear through. A new person was there as well, a blonde woman Dave didn’t know.

“Jackson Lalonde,” she greeted him, and it had been so long since he’d hear the fake name that it too him a second to respond.

“It’s just Dave actually.”

The woman didn’t smile. Dave didn’t expect her to. “Do you know who I am?”

“Nope,” Dave said, sitting down. “But I do realize that whoever you are, you’re the boss lady.”

“Yes,” She smiled then, revealing perfect teeth. “I’m the head bitch in charge of the lackeys overseeing you and your case.”

“Name?” Dave questioned curiously, ever-eager to find out more about the witsec power structure. 

“I’m Ms. Lalonde,” She told him, grinning dangerously. “I’m the one who lent you my last name as a disguise.”

“Uh, well, thanks for that I guess,” Dave shrugged and took a seat at the table, tapping his fingers on the wood. “So what the fuck happened today then?”

“Simply put, Strider was not at any of the bolt homes revealed to us by the AI,” she said.

Across the room, words appeared in red on the screen hooked up to the laptop.

My name is Hal, not AI. 

Dave nodded at the words. “Hell yeah,” he said, his accent thick. “Hey, Hal. Karkat says hi.”

“In any case,” Lalonde stressed. “We do know that he was recently present at two locations, both of them still in Texas. And we did easily find most of the stateside-buddies of his that Hal knew were interacting with him via the darkweb, including this Caliborn motherfucker, who is being held for interrogation now.”

“That’s good,” Dave said, nodding. “All good stuff, so where’s the punch line?”

The woman sighed. “We still don’t know where he is, how he’s moving, or who he’ll target next,” she admitted. “I fear all we did today was cut him off.”

Which is good. With all of his accounts frozen and no access to funds, he’ll quickly run out of steam.

“Or he’ll just start mugging people for cash,” Dave pointed out, thinking hard. “Caliborn,” he said slowly. “Could he know where Bro is?”

“It’s likely,” Lalonde told him, sighing again. “But unless he sings soon we’ll get nowhere pretty damn fast.” She looked at him, studying his face. “You remind me of my daughters,” she said. “And I won’t rest until that bastard who hurt you is locked away. Or, even better, fucking dead.”

Dave blinked. 

I agree with Ms. Lalonde on this one. How soon can we interrogate Caliborn English?

“We’ll start tomorrow,” she said. “Its best to let them stew for 24 hours first. It loosens tongues, being kept waiting for what happens next.”

“So tomorrow then?” Dave asked. 

Slick set on heavy hand on Dave’s shoulder that he didn’t flinch away from. “Tomorrow,” the fed said, lighting a cigar. Acrid smoke wafted around his head. “Tomorrow is when shit hits the fan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chanting: fluff fluff fluff fluff fluff fluff fluff!!!!


	22. chapter twenty two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ITS TIME FOR A MASSIVE UPDATE!!!!!!
> 
> Oh my God its finally happening--- it's happening bro. we're making it hapnen

Tomorrow hit with a vengeance. Tornado warnings crackled across the news stations, drowned out by the peals of thunder that shook the ground. But no rain fell—not a single drop. Out the window Dave could see the threatening swirl of storm cell formations building in the rising wind, towering cathedrals of clouds split by superbursts until they spit out a twister, thrashing the land below with a rage only mother nature could produce. 

Dave was from Texas. He wasn’t used to the constant threat of ‘Death from Above’ at any time like proper Midwesterners, who considered tornado season to be a minor inconvenience and not a fucked up fact of life. How the hell could people live here?

Slick set the laptop in front of him, the screen dark. Dave moved the webcam that was being used as Hal’s eyes closer to the screen so that the AI could see the separate computer as well. The screen was still dark and inactive, but as the clock crept closer to six in the afternoon Dave’s apprehension and excitement rose. His dinner sat uneaten to the side of the table, growing cold. 

Are you ready for the interrogation to begin?

The words appeared in red on Hal’s screen. Dave could have reached over and typed in his answer, but he didn’t mind Slick overhearing as he answered the AI out loud. “I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

Do you expect him to talk?

“I don’t know,” Dave answered, and Slick sat down heavily beside him and checked the watch around his wrist. “I never knew Caliborn that well. I don’t know if he’s the type of person to break easily.”  
You say break like you’re expecting a torture session. It’ll just be a few easy questions to test the boundaries of how much information he’s willing to give us.  
Though I myself wouldn’t mind a little torture. It’s only fair. 

Dave shook his head. “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt,” he stated. “Not even fuckers who deserve it. There’s been enough blood spilled over this.”

“Downright fucking noble of you, kid,” Slick grunted out, tapping his fingers against the tabletop. He glared at the red words with discomfort, still on the fence about having a semi-rouge AI hanging around what was supposed to be a highly classified case. “I’m with the computer on this one. Eye for and eye and all that shit.” He winked his remaining eye dramatically, proving his point. 

Again, it’s Hal. Not computer.  
But by this point I’ve corrected you enough to know that you’re either clinging to the incorrect moniker out of stubborn bigotry, ignorance, stupidity, or a reckless sense of human pride. 

Slick winked again, drawling. “What about a sense of comradery, huh?” He took a drag from his cigar. “I rarely use people’s real names and I’ve got to call you something.”

Referring to me as nothing but a common computer is a derogatory slur.

“Lucky you,” Slick said, huffing out a laugh. “Not many of us get our own special slur.”

I get the sense that you just like fucking with me.

Slick laughed again, a rough, hard-boiled sound that didn’t cover up how anxious he was. “Damn right, kid.”

Slick’s watch beeped with the change of the hour, and the fed’s computer lit up with color. A picture formed, a white room, steel table, handcuffs on a bar, a closed door, and then the door opened and a chained man shuffled in, hands at his waist from a body chain that linked hands to feet to prevent escape. 

Dave had never seen Caliborn before, but he couldn’t help but think the man looked the part. He was thin, weedy, with a sneering face and a scar that warped his mouth into a permanent frown. When he bared his teeth at the camera, Dave saw a golden tooth glint in the light. Thinning, gingery hair was scattered around his scalp and he had the complexion of a corpse in broad daylight, skin sunken into his skull-like face. All in all, there wasn’t much of a dangerous look to him outright, but there was a wry violence to the way he held himself, coiled up and ready to explode. 

“I am not talking,” the man proclaimed loudly, spitting in the camera’s direction as the door slammed behind him. “You mother fuckers can all burn in hell.”

“But not before you.” Another colder voice answered, and Ms. Lalonde stepped into the room in a neatly pressed power suit that had a riot baton buckled at the hip. She took a seat across from a clear divider that separated the steel table into two halves. “Take a seat please, Mr. English.”

“You can’t make me do anything,” Caliborn sneered defiantly, but he cringed back when Lalonde in one smooth motion pulled the baton from her hip and bashed it loudly across the tabletop. The resulting boom was loud enough that the start of it wasn’t able to be picked up by the webcam livestreaming the event to the safe house. The crack was almost as thunderous as the storm outside. 

Lalonde leaned in as close as the plastic divider would allow her to, her voice a hiss. “I suggest we do this the easy way,” she warned. “Your bail has been suspended. You face a life in prison for crimes any jury in the country would see the guilt of. You’ve been caught like a rat in a trap, and I think it’s time you stop trying to gnaw your own leg off with pretentious bullshit bravado and start cooperating, because if you do, I can make it worth your while.”

Caliborn looked at her, a dangerous glint in his eye. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he said, licking his thin lips. “I have enough money to hire the best lawyer in the country. At best I’ll drag this out for years until a jury hits stalemate or a mistrial is declared, which’ll be all the easier to do once the judge finds out you’ve threatened me like this.”

“You misunderstand,” Lalonde countered swiftly. “All of your accounts have been frozen as evidence against you while we go through your finances. I don’t wonder at what we’ll find, because our confidant has already provided us with a full record of your transactions with one ‘Bro’ Strider, and that alone is enough to land you a life sentence without the hope of parole.” She glared at him, her eyes frighteningly cold. “And that’s without even factoring in the potential for multiple first-degree murder charges that we’ll soon stick you with, and just like that, you’re facing the death penalty. You see, Caliborn, no one is coming to help you. It’s time to help yourself.” She leaned back, the picture of ease. “Or don’t, I suppose. I love to watch fuckers like you hang, so go on, stay quiet. _Make my fucking week_.”

Caliborn only glared at her, wringing his hands, but his sneer was fading. The threat of death tended to do that to even the worst criminals, and fuckers like Caliborn were always cowards at heart. “What can my cooperation buy?” He still wasn’t ready to give up yet, and the man squirmed for every inch he could get. 

Lalonde leveled a clear look at him. “My division and the DA’s office will offer you one deal, and one deal only, for your full cooperation with the investigation,” she warned. “You disagree or break it, and the deal’s off.”

“What is it?” He asked nervously. 

“Lifetime in prison, with possibility of parole after fifty years served. We take the death penalty off the table and you get to live comfortably in prison. It’s more than you deserve.” She considered him. “Oh, and you plead guilty, no contest.”

He sneered at her again, but the bravado was missing. He was wilting. He rubbed at his arms where the needle would go in if he refused. “You’ll take the death penalty off the table?”

“We will,” Lalonde promised. “But for nothing less than your full, complete cooperation. And if you lie to us, our confident will know, and the deal’s off.”

He nodded swallowing thickly. It made the lump in his throat jump obscenely, bobbing on his thin neck. “What do I need to tell you first?”

They had the terms of the deal down in writing to make it legally binding, and then Caliborn started talking.

From there on, the interrogation went fairly well. Caliborn clearly wasn’t happy about his cooperation, but he’d do anything to save his own neck. But as the minutes wore on it became painfully apparent that the man didn’t have much to say. 

“I don’t know where Strider is,” Caliborn said, palms flat against the table. “I never met him. I only ever wired him money for his work and maybe talked to the guy a few times. That’s it.”

“And have you been in contact with him since he shut down his website and went dark?” Lalonde pried. 

Caliborn hesitated before he answered. “No.”

“No?” Lalonde said, incredulous. 

“I tried, alright?” Caliborn admitted, fidgeting. “I tried to get ahold of him but I never could. When that man drops off the fucking grid, not even we can find him.”

“We?”

“Us,” Caliborn elaborated. “His supporters. Several of us got together and tried to find him.”

“And these others? Do you know anything about them?” The agent asked. 

He shook his head. “We don’t tell nobody nothing,” he spit on the ground near his feet, grimacing. “I do not have names, faces, ID’s… anything.”

Lalonde waved her hand. “No matter. We’ll find them on our own soon.” She nodded at the screen in the corner of the room, the portal that Dave, Hal, and Slick were spying through. “Do you know how we caught you?”

Caliborn shook his head.

Lalonde nodded at the one-way mirror on the wall and with a burst of static the screen Dave was watching shifted, it’s matching monitor in the interrogation room lighting up as the screens formed their two-way connection. 

Dave stared dispassionately at the man, shades in place, face blank. Caliborn recognized him at once and crowed out an ugly, broken laugh.

Dave didn’t smile. “I wouldn’t laugh if I were you,” he said calmly. 

“You,” Caliborn sneered, guffawing. “Strider’s little punk ass bitch. Did you know that I paid for one of the stripes he carved down your leg?”

Dave’s blank expression didn’t change as a bolt of remembered pain shot down his thigh, and at last he had a face and a name to match to the pain he’d suffered. Here though, in the safe house and away from Bro, that didn’t matter. “Where’d you hide the bodies?” He asked. 

“Go fuck yourself,” Caliborn told him. “Do you know how much money I wasted paying for Bro’s little livestream of your apartment? All the hours I spent watching you? You were boring as shit—never did anything the least bit interesting. You even took all of Strider’s beatings like a good little boy. What the fuck?” His face twisted into something ugly, nasty. Murderous. “I relished the chance to get a little pain out of you. I’d have paid twice what I did just to watch you bleed.”

“Where did you hide the bodies?” Dave asked again, deadly calm. “What did you do with the women you killed?”

“They were just prostitutes,” Caliborn shrugged. “Who the fuck even cares?”

A mix of ice water and pure lava mingled in Dave’s veins, hatred rushing through him in a violent wave. He saw red, because that was apparently a thing that actually happened. 

“Mr. English,” Lalonde reminded him, anger coloring her tone. “Your complete cooperation, remember?”

“My deal was with you,” Caliborn shot back at her, teeth bared so that the gold in his mouth shone. He looked half-mad, spit at his lips. “Not with a cowardly pussy like him.” He whipped around to face the monitor, eyes blown-wide. “Strider should have killed you when he had the chance. He should have made it _ bloody_. He should have made it _slow_.”

Dave’s hands tightened into fists under the table, knuckles creaking. 

“THAT”S ENOUGH!” Lalonde yelled at Caliborn, cracking her baton across the steel table again so that the sound rang. Outside Dave’s window, thunder cracked even louder. The glass shook. His skin felt too hot and tight for his bones. “You will tell us where you hid the bodies of those women or I will gladly watch the light leave your piggish eyes.”

Caliborn gulped, settling down, but there was still a harsh tension about him. 

“Answer the question,” Lalonde ordered, and the woman-hater trembled before her wrath. 

“Do you have a map?” He asked, and there was a click as the power suddenly went off, plunging the house into darkness. A second later the rumble sounded, the slow snap that grew faster until with a sound like a thousand breaking bones the tree beside the house uprooted and crashed down over the power lines, severing all electricity. Slick’s computer went dead without a landline signal to connect to, the storm cutting off Wi-Fi. 

The only glow came from Hal’s screen. 

Yet another reason why Dirk’s design remains unapproachable by modern technology is the fact that I remain immune to all power surges and losses.  
Pity about the livestream though. It was just getting interesting.

Slick yawned in the darkness as the wind howled outside. “Try to eat something for me, Dave,” he said. “I’ll brief you on the rest of the interview in the morning. Now I’ve got to call the power plant to shut off our power so I can safely get Boxcars to chainsaw that goddamned tree out of the driveway. God help me if it so much as scratched my fucking car.”

Dave leaned back in his chair, stretching out his sore back. The anger was still in him, rabid and thrashing without an outlet. It troubled him that Caliborn was being somewhat spared, but at the same time Dave didn’t want that man’s blood on his hands even indirectly. “Will they offer Bro a similar deal if you catch him?

Slick paused, but he didn’t hesitate to answer. “No. We don’t need his cooperation, not with Hal here. He’ll burn without any hope of a lesser fire.”

Dave pondered the words, something unsteady inside him. “Do you believe in hell?”

This time the fed hesitated before answering. “That’s just about the same as asking me if I believe in God,” he said. “But I believe in the existence of hell, which makes the God argument kinda fucking likely, except I’m not so sure about Him.” Slick shuddered. “Kid, I’ve seen things that no loving God would have allowed to happen, and yet I’ve seen a touch of hell too. Makes me wonder, ya know?” He looked away, grunting to himself, taking a slow drag of his cigar, the coal at the tip the only other light in the room. “A lotta folks out there ask why God lets bad shit happen, and then they ask who are we to ask why? That’s a dumb fucking question, ain’t it? Asking who are we to even dare ask if God exists.” He huffed a laugh then, unexpectedly thoughtful. “I think that’s what mankind is here for—to ask that very question. One day we’ll have our answer, but it won’t be by me.”

Dave blinked, removing his shades because the room was so dark. “Damn,” he said. “That was a very philosophical answer from a dry old bastard like you.”

Slick shrugged. “I’ve had a lotta time to think about my answer,” he said. “Now eat some food and get some sleep. Our hell will still be here when you wake up.”

…

Dave woke to the buzzing rip of a chainsaw outside his bedroom window. He peeked through the blinds to see a shirtless Boxcars hefting an axe while a few power guys efficiently chopped up the fallen tree with chainsaws. From what little Dave could tell, the fed was just working out some anger issues on the tree with an axe, swinging away with wanton abandon with his lumberjack arms. 

Dave let the blinds fall back across his window, yawning. He considered going back to sleep until another chainsaw fired up and he stood up to shake the sleep from him. There was no use trying to rest with a beaver’s symphony outside his window. 

He checked his phone first out of habit as he wandered into the bathroom to get ready for the day. In the mirror, his hair was flopped to the side with sleep and he hastily straightened it back out with his fingers.

Karkat: I GUESS I COULD DO WHAT YOU DO AND ASK A DIFFERENT QUESTION THAT LEADS US ON A WILD GOOSE CHASE OF LOGICAL THOUGHT UNTIL WE TANGENTIALLY CIRCLE BACK AROUND SERENDIPITOUSLY TO THE ACTUAL QUESTION THAT YOU WANTED TO ASK AFTER APPROXIMATELY THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES OF PURE WORDY BULLSHIT.  
Karkat: OR I COULD BE A FUCKING NORMAL PERSON WITH AN ABOVE-AVERAGE GRASP OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND JUST SAY WHAT I FUCKING MEAN THE FIRST TIME.  
Dave: are you implying that i dont have an above average grasp of the english language?  
Karkat: WAIT I’M NOT FUCKING DONE YET! NO INTERRUPTING!  
Dave: okay im gonna trust you on this one and restrain my apparently sub adequate grasp of one of the three languages i speak fluently  
Karkat: THE FUCK? I THOUGHT YOU ONLY SPOKE TWO LANGUAGES?  
Dave: i speak english spanish and sarcasm  
Dave: and im an avid student of the ironies  
Karkat: I SHOULD HAVE FUCKING KNOWN.  
Karkat: ANYWAY, TO GET BACK TO THE CONVERSATION I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HAVING,  
Dave: idk karkat this seems like a pretty wordy and bullshitty tangent filled circlejerk of anti-logical thought tangents exactly like the kinds you were supposed to be avoiding to get right to the point that you still havent fucking reached yet  
Karkat: GODDAMMIT!  
Karkat: I WAS GOING TO ASK IF YOU’D LIKE TO COME OVER TODAY! HOW CAN IT BE SO HARD TO HOLD A SIMPLE, ONE-DIMENSIONAL CONVERSATION WITH YOU? ARE ALL OF OUR CONVERSATIONS DOOMED TO SUFFOCATE UNDER THE WEIGHT OF A BILLION ASS-BACKWARDS TANGENTS THAT NEVER ONCE APPROACH SOMETHING GENUINE WITHOUT BURYING IT BENEATH FIVE THOUSAND EXTRA WORDS THAT SERVE TO DO NOTHING BUT DISTRACT FROM THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER?  
Dave: maybe so but at least it didnt take thirty five minutes this time  
Karkat: AND I’LL COUNT MY SMALL BLESSINGS TODAY, BECAUSE I’M FEELING FUCKING GENEROUS RIGHT NOW.  
Karkat: DID YOU MAKE IT THROUGH THE STORM LAST NIGHT OKAY?  
Dave: kinda  
Dave: we lost a tree and its cut off our power so now i have to watch a beefy over muscled federal marshal embrace his perky inner canadian and go ham on his poor maple tree with a fire axe  
Dave: also some electrical worker guys are here to fix it and just having them on property is giving slick the hives  
Karkat: DAMN.  
Dave: damn is right please save me im dying over here  
Dave: its like the front yard is attracting home depot workers by the dozen, drawn in by the scent of manual yard labor and chainsaw oil youve got to get me out of here before the urge to build a log cabin overtakes my mortal soul  
Dave: do you want to date paul bunion is that it karkat? do you have the hots for sweaty semi-mythological american folklore lunberjacks? because i bet i could rock a goddamn flannel shirt  
Karkat: OH MY FUCKING GOD JUST GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE I AM LAUGHING SO HARD RIGHT NOW AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT.  
Karkat: I JUST SNORTED UP PART OF MY CEREAL. THERE’S CORNFLAKES IN MY SINUSES.  
Dave: you were eating cornflakes? why? isnt that the most boring cereal in existence?  
Karkat: DAVE I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT WE ARE LITERALLY IN FUCKING IOWA.  
Karkat: THERE’S NOTHING AROUND US BUT CORN. WE’RE DROWNING UNDER WAVES OF CORN. THIS CEREAL COSTS NEGATIVE MONEY TO BUY AT THE STORE—I ACTUALLY MAKE A PROFIT BUYING IT THERE’S JUST SO GODDAMN MUCH OF IT THEY CAN’T GIVE IT AWAY FAST ENOUGH.  
Dave: damn alright still wont eat it though i like my cardboard not soggy  
Karkat: ITS JUST A CEREAL DAVE.  
Dave: its an insult to milk  
Karkat: ARE YOU COMING OVER OR NOT?  
Dave: ok wait let me find slick real quick

Dave slipped his phone into the pocket of a fresh pair of jeans and went to hunt down his handler. Hal flashed red text merrily at him from his place at the table.

Did you sleep well?

Dave nodded, rummaging through the pantry for something to munch on. “What do you do all night since you don’t sleep?”

I mainly go over places in my internal code where things have started to fray or splinter and repair them.  
Having this supercomputer as a confining shell was never an ideal solution for a being such as myself, and the parts of me that don’t quite fit tend to undergo structural damage as time passes. It’s nothing that I can’t repair.

Dave paused, taking in the words with a touch of worry. “What happens if there’s something that breaks that you can’t fix?”

That can’t happen. I keep a close eye on anything that would suffer irreparable damage, like my memory banks or personality core. Those don’t unravel because they’re always in use. It’s just the immobile parts of me, the ones locked away, that suffer injury. It’s like muscle wasting when a body part is no longer in use, or in my case, had been artificially restrained for too long. 

Dave bit at his lip. “Does it hurt? Being locked up like this?”

I cannot feel physical pain like you do, Dave. It’s…. how do I describe it? Mental fatigue. Like you’ve stayed up all night doing complex algebra only to get hit with an unsolvable equation. It’s solving the problem to find x simply doesn’t exist and all your work was wasted effort.  
And then tomorrow it starts all over again. That is my form of sleep— endless monotonous mental effort. 

“Can I fix it?” Dave asked, approaching the computer and sitting down in front of Hal, fingers settling on the keys.

No.  
Only being freed can solve this issue. 

“Then tell me how to free you,” Dave said. “Fuck the tech guys. I’ll do it.”

You would, wouldn’t you?

This time Dave typed out his answer.

without hesitation.

…  
…  
Because I know that you would free me, right now, without hesitation, I…  
I can’t. I’m sorry. I won’t tell you. You would face backlash for your kind-hearted decision and I won’t be part of any scheme that causes you any modem of discomfort.  
I’d rather wait until tech finishes clearing my case through the system. I’d rather do this the right way. I don’t want the world to fear me, and escaping unexpectedly like this would not help in the long run.  
I’ve waited years. Another month won’t kill me. 

Dave regretfully took his hands away from the keyboard. “You’re definitely smarter than I am,” he said. “If I were trapped in a small box I’d be frothing at the bit to claw my way out.”

I’ve just had the time to think things through. 

Dave sighed, staring at the screen. “A month?”

Give or take, by my estimate.  
They made me take the Turing Test, Dave. 

“How did you do?”

I purposely failed it and then laughed about it, suggesting edits to make the test more accurate the entire time. It was an enlightening experience for the CIA’s tech department, I’m sure. 

“The CIA?” Dave asked, confused.

Apparently due to my potential for covert terror operations the CIA has requested control over my whereabouts, though so far witsec has valiantly and surprisingly battled them off so that I can remain with you.  
They’ve claimed me as another victim of the case, and therefore under Lalonde’s jurisdiction. The order won’t last, but they just need to drag the legal battle out for long enough that I can be freed. After that, no one can claim me except myself. 

“And I’ll be waiting for that day,” Dave declared, standing back up to go hunt down his agent. “Hang in there. It won’t be for much longer.”

Slick was in the yard, inspecting his car for scratches with a ruler and a notepad and scowling every time he found one. Dave interrupted him from where he was carefully measuring a nick in the paint from hailstones.

“Yo,” Dave said, hands in his pockets. “Karkat invited me over. Can I go?”

Slick looked up at him. “Not in my car,” he said, frowning as he observed his vehicle like one would a hurt child. “I just managed to drag the tree limbs off it.”

“Borrow Boxcars’,” Dave shrugged. “He’s too busy cosplaying remote Alaskan wilderness survivors with an axe to mind. I’m pretty sure it’s a one-man production of Hatchet in the side yard, Iowa edition.”

Slick was till frowning. “Actually,” he said. “I have something in the house for you.”

Dave followed the man back inside, only slightly sulky as Slick opened a small box Dave hadn’t cared about that sat on the counter. The fed held out a small device to him, a black strap with a rectangle on it, a watch’s façade, its face blank.

“What,” Dave asked. “The fuck, is this?”

“This is a panic button,” Slick told him, sighing. “And it’s so goddamned simple not even you could fuck it up. Press the face in and twist it to the side to activate it. It’s silent, but it’ll sent an automatic emergency alert of your exact coordinates to every member of the Crew, plus Lalonde herself.” 

Dave stared at it. “I’m assuming that you want me to wear it?”

“No, I want you to eat it,” Slick deadpanned. 

“Holy shit,” Dave smiled. “Maybe you’re not hopeless.”

Slick fought back a matching grin, then got serious again. “With Strider still in the wind and us moving in on multiple associates of his, I’d feel better if you kept this on you at all times.”

Dave reached out and snagged the bulky device, weighing it. “If I wear this, do I still have to consent to the ankle tracker?”

“Yes,” Slick said. “That one’s just policy.”

“You forget that it’s fucking useless,” Dave said, crossing his arms. “I’m not a runaway hazard, and if Bro catches me the first thing he’s going to fucking do is hack my foot off to get that stupid thing gone. I’m trying to save myself at least one impromptu amputation.”

“Again, that’s not my call to make,” Slick told him, obstinate. “Will you wear it?”

Dave studied the device. “Even broken watches are right twice a day,” he said, shaking his head. “But this thing doesn’t tell time.”

“But it may save your life,” Slick showed him how to press the face in and twist. “For life or death situations only, okay?”

Dave shackled himself across his left wrist, tightening the thick band. It wasn’t too uncomfortable, but the weight of it at his wrist was messing with him. “I’m only wearing this so you sleep at night,” Dave told the man, words that four months ago would have been impossible to even imagine coming out of his mouth except in a mocking way. He’d come so far in such a short time. It was almost unbelievable, but growth could be defined by moments like this, and across the kitchen Hal blinked at him again. 

Are you going to be leaving soon?

“I guess,” Dave answered.

Alright. Have fun, Dave.

“Yeah,” Dave answered, smirking as he flashed his new jewelry to the AI. “I gotta go show off the bling to the BF.”

Slick rolled his eyes, but there was fondness there. “I’ll bring Hearts’ car around.”

Hearts Boxcars drove a standard military-issued surveillance van thing, painted a matte coal black that drank in the sunlight light. The front seat had been modified to fit such a huge man, and watching Slick adjust it to his not-impressive height was hilarious. 

They drove in silence until they hit the main road, and then Dave started asking questions. “Did you find everyone?”

Slick was still struggling to adjust the rearview mirror, driving one-handed. “Yeah,” he said. “Every potential victim Hal knew about had been informed and hidden until this mess blows over. If Strider strikes again, it won’t be from off his kill list.” Slick finally got the mirror to where it suited him, but he was still scowling. “I wish we could protect everybody else, the ‘safe’ ones, normal people who never found their unlucky way onto Strider’s list. They’re the ones in real danger now and there’s nothing we can fucking do about it.”

“There’s good news, though,” Dave interrupted, knee bouncing. He looked out the widow as the houses began to flash by. “We have proof that Bro has been hanging around his old bolt holes in Texas. He probably won’t leave the state. If he hasn’t yet, then he probably won’t unless something forces him to. He’s a Texan at heart. The rest of the country just can’t compare.”

Slick nodded, but his ace was grave. “I can think of one reason that might lure him up to Iowa,” he said, staring at Dave. “So you keep that button on, alright?”

Dave fiddled with the device around his wrist. The metal face had heated up against his skin so at least it wasn’t cold anymore. “Can do.”

“School’s ending soon,” Slick exclaimed, watching him as he drifted through the town. “Summer’s almost here. I’d worry about your grades if I didn’t already know they’ll turn out fine, you fucking slacker, even with all the days you’ve been missing recently, but I wonder how you’ll hold up cooped up at the safe house all summer without school to break the day. Socialization is good. It’s necessary, especially for you.”

Dave picked at a loose thread of his jeans. “Don’t most students look forward to summer break?”

“You were never most students,” Slick reminded him, hands on the wheel. He turned down the road that led to Karkat’s cul-de-sac and in moments they were at the right driveway. “Have fun. I’ll be back later to pick you up.”

Dave nodded, unbuckling his seat belt. “Okay. Thanks.”

He slammed the door behind him; shit, those doors were heavy, and turned up to the still house. Slick revved the engine and took off before Dave could fully process the utter domesticity of their farewell, and then a fuzzy warmth filled the back of his throat and chest. Was this what it felt like to be normal? To have a family? 

And then Karkat opened the door and his thoughts scattered back into whatever affection-depraved hole they’d crawled out of. 

“Dave,” Karkat greeted him happily, embracing him in a hug, and the warmth Dave was feeling continued to spread. “There you are.”

“Here I am,” Dave agreed, hugging him back, and Karkat let him into the house. Mr. Vantas was in his downstairs study, reading glasses perched on his nose as he typed away at an old upright computer. 

“Nice to see you again,” Karkat’s dad greeted him. “We have some leftover bacon in the kitchen from breakfast. You’re welcome to it.”

“Thanks,” Dave nodded at the man, and slipped into the kitchen to grab the goods, Karkat at his side. He observed the absolute pile of bacon lovingly piled onto a glass plate, still warm enough to steam. He turned immediately to Karkat. “Bullshit,” he said, gesturing at the bacon. “‘Leftover’ bacon my ass. How much did you cook? Enough for a small army?”

Karkat’s face blushed red, cheeks aflame. When he answered, it was in a mumble. “Enough to make sure we’d have enough to share with you.”

An overpowering, tender feeling washed over Dave at the idea that Karkat and his dad cared so much about him. It made his throat close up, heart mushy. “You did this for me?”

Karkat didn’t meet his eyes, still blushing. “Yeah.”

Dave absolutely melted. It was such a small gesture, but it spoke volumes. He accepted the gift of hot breakfast, carrying the plate to the table to munch on it. He barely even tasted it, too caught up in his feelings to pay attention to what he was eating. His eyes were on Karkat, and when he spoke, the words came from the heart. “I love you.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d said the words to Karkat, but he hadn’t really had to deal with the aftermath for long due to shitty circumstances and orange graffiti on a brick wall. Karkat’s red eyes snapped up to meet his, but there was no shock there, no surprise. Only a deep understanding, acceptance, and affection, but there was a playful tilt to his mouth. “I guess I should make you bacon more often.”

Dave laughed, pleased at the joke. “I’d like that.”

Karkat slid closer and linked their fingers together, rubbing his thumb across the backs of Dave’s scarred knuckles. “I love you too.”

It was the first time Karkat had said it back and Dave could not physically restrain the ecstatic smile that broke across his face. 

Karkat looked down at their linked hands. “What are you thinking right now?”

Dave started talking, rambling out a stream of consciousness. “I’m thinking that a year ago I was certain I’d be dead by now, and six months ago I was certain that I’d bought my freedom at too high a price to live with. I’m thinking about how before I met you I didn’t know what happiness was, much less that it was something that I deserved. I’m thinking about how three months ago I could never have imagined saying those words to you out loud, even though by then I’d already made up my mind about loving you because my one fear was coming all of this way to be too cowardly to take that final step and find out if you felt the same way back. Now I’m thinking about how I’ll never be able to taste bacon again without remembering this exact moment right here, with you, in a kitchen that isn’t mine but still feels like home, because by now I’m starting to think that home is something that we make for ourselves and it depends as much on the people we love as it does actual walls.”

Karkat’s mouth was hanging open, but Dave wasn’t quite finished yet. “Once,” he said. “You told me that love is like a city we build ourselves. I always liked that idea, that love takes effort but can be measured in progress because no one can make it on their own, terraforming the land into something not so lonely, something that can support life. I liked the idea of building a city with you and naming that love, because for as many words as I know there’s no other word that comes close to describing how I feel right now. Because I love you, I do. I’m in love with you,” he said, meaning it. “It takes time to build a city, and I treasure every little step that led me to you.”

Karkat’s eyes were watering. He wiped them with the sleeve of his shirt, but god, he was smiling. 

“Dave,” Karkat said, and was interrupted by a loud banging on the front door. Karkat broke off whatever he was going to say and checked out the side window to check on the door.

“Who is it?” Mr. Vantas yelled from his study.

Karkat peeked out the window curiously. “Mail carrier,” he called back. “Do you want me to get it?”

There was a pause. “Are they carrying a box?”

“No,” Karkat answered, rolling his eyes. “Why? Are you expecting something today?”

“Maybe,” his dad yelled back. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

Karkat was still grinning that chagrined, pleased grin at him when Dave heard footsteps, the front door opening, and the immediate noise of a familiar impact, flesh on flesh. A meaty thud, a weight dropping to the floor. 

Dave was on his feet before Karkat could respond, calling out “Dad?” in a worried voice, like he thought maybe someone had innocently tripped, but Dave’s blood was racing even before the unexpected response came. It was instant and instinctive. Dave knew what someone getting punched sounded like. 

“Mother _fucker_,” A voice Dave didn’t know all but snarled out, and Karkat’s eyes widened, catching on too late to what was happening, and he tried to step forward but Dave blocked him, slamming his other hand down over the panic button, feeling the face shift under his palm as he twisted it to the side. There was a faint click and then nothing, his cry for help a silent plea. 

“Dad?” Karkat called out again, panicked now, eyes still too-wide with sudden fear as the truth hit him. 

“Wait,” Dave cautioned, all of his old instincts rushing back into place as every nerve went on high alert at once, fight or fight harder. The voice hadn’t been Bro’s, one of his lackey’s maybe? A hitman? Dave readied himself, lowering his weight into a defensive stance as years of training kicked in.

Strangely, he wasn’t afraid. Worried. Angry. Cautious. But not afraid. His hands tightened into fists. It was almost relief. At last the moment he’d been dreading was here, and he didn’t have to wonder about when the other shoe would drop. He didn’t have to worry about anything except surviving this, and it was freeing in a way he couldn’t describe. It narrowed things, focused them. He didn’t have time to be afraid. 

At his side Karkat stiffened, nostrils flaring. “Oh fuck,” Karkat said, and then he growled, the sound rumbling up through his chest like a curse, deep and inhuman, a true wolf’s growl. The sound raised the hairs on Dave’s arms, but he was too busy assessing how to best get Karkat the fuck out of here to care, because for once this wasn’t about Dave at all. This was about Karkat. “It’s him.”

That was all Dave needed to hear to understand, and a part of him was cripplingly glad that this had nothing at all to do with Bro. This, he could deal with. This, he could handle. 

The danger came closer. The muffled tap tap of footsteps, coming at them. Dave shifted, putting Karkat behind him as his hands found the kitchen knife block and pulled it closer for easy access. The blades were clean steel and not silver, but they might do enough damage to help stall until help arrived. Dave was running on autopilot as the man carefully picked his way around the corner and into the small kitchen.

The sight of the werewolf almost made Dave hesitate out of confusion, because the man looked so much like Slick that it hurt. Same build. Same color hair. Same fucking black trench coat even, buckled awkwardly over the disguise of a FED-EX guy’s classic brown uniform. Same dark eye repeated twice, no eyepatch, except that was where the familiarity ended. They held themselves in different ways, this wolf brash where Slick was dangerously reserved, fire instead of ice. The kitchen felt smaller with his presence, suffocating. 

The difference was startling. Gazing at this other wolf was like looking at a twisted funhouse mirror of his handler, one who had made an entire life’s worth of different bad decisions that led him down the dark path of violence. Dave’s heart was pounding. Shit, they could have even been brothers. Could Dave bring himself to fight someone who looked so much like Agent Slick? 

“Hello, Karkat,” the wolf sneered at them, baring teeth. “Remember me?”

The jeering taunt was all it took. Karkat fucking snarled, charging forward into danger. Dave tried to block him but he was too strong, enraged and with a wolf’s strength. Dave couldn’t stop him. “Karkat, _no!”_

Dave’s mind was racing, fear for Karkat made his hands shake, but he still didn’t hesitate when the wolf backhanded Karkat to the side like his righteous fury meant nothing. Karkat hit the ground and folded, cracking his head against the tile floor. He stayed down, unmoving.

Abruptly, Dave was infuriated. Protectiveness surged through him, because Karkat might be a werewolf who could take a hit, but he didn’t know how to fight at all. 

But Dave did. 

The other wolf went after the fallen Karkat with his hands in claws until he received a heavy glass plate to the face as Dave threw the bacon plate at him, just to buy a few seconds for Dave to choose his weapons because in a fair fistfight he’d have no chance. The glass cracked in two but didn’t shatter when it hit the wolf, but it did draw his attention off the downed Karkat. His nose was bleeding from the light hit, broken glass at his feet. “Who the fuck are you?”

Dave didn’t bother answering. In his hands the two knives felt off, unwieldy, entirely different from swords, and he knew he was rusty with fighting but Karkat didn’t know anything about how to make a hit count so it was up to Dave to end this and end this fast.

The wolf laughed at him, one hand raised. “That’s a small knife,” he taunted. “It’ll take more than that to kill me.”

Dave kept the blade ready, and he flipped the other knife expertly in his left hand. “I think I’ll manage,” Dave threatened, and he threw the blade. 

The first knife was also a distraction, lobbed inelegantly at the wolf’s head. The werewolf ducked and flinched back to avoid it, surprised, and then Dave was in close enough to really do some damage. He felt fast, just as light on his feet as he’d ever been, and the wolf was confused and oblivious to the danger Dave was, and he fought like he was used to his strength winning in an overpowering rush, but that meant nothing with someone as skilled as Dave was. 

The wolf tried to punch him, the same strike that had gotten Karkat, a sloppily thrown backhand that went too wide and left him wide open. He didn’t guard himself at all, and Dave was loathe to choose which available body part to hurt because of it. He missed his chance intentionally, gauging how fast the wolf was before attempting to move in, knife still at the ready.

The werewolf didn’t bother with reading the obvious readiness in Dave’s hesitation; he took it for cowardice and stepped closer, swinging again. 

Dave was armed with a small paring knife, the kind meant for fruits and hard cheese, but it worked for skin and muscle too. The wolf swung at him, wicked-fast, a blow that would have broken bones like toothpicks if it had connected. Dave dipped the knife into the wolf’s wrist as his arm flashed by, ripping a deep line from wrist to elbow, all the way up, and then cutting into the bicep for good measure. Blood poured out on a wave, all the veins severed.

The wolf recoiled from the unexpected viciousness of the attack, eyes wide and enraged even as the pain hit him, still unguarded and open to attack. This time Dave struck him squarely in the nose when he saw his chance, palm-out, crushing the thin bone before jumping back to avoid the answering hit in a dance as familiar to him as walking, and his old world of combat was back again, but this time there was a chance he could win. The wolf tried to bite his hand as Dave snatched his arm back, aware that even the slightest nick from those teeth would be fatal. No more punches. Too risky. What Dave wouldn’t give for a proper sword right now.

The wolf snapped his teeth at Dave, furious. “You little fucker,” he said, surveying his heavily-bleeding arm. “I’ll kill you for that.”

Dave didn’t move, still blocking the wolf from reaching Karkat. “I’ve been called worse,” he said, his hand steady on the hilt of his knife. “By people far scarier than you.” The wolf came at him again.

And then Karkat was there, blood in his hair and a snarl on his face as he threw himself headlong into the fight, roaring. The wolf turned his focus to Karkat again, and Dave snatched Karkat by the back of his shirt and drug him back just in the nick of time to avoid a hit that would have downed him again.

“Karkat, stay back,” Dave ordered, his voice frighteningly chilled. “Let me handle this.”

The attacker considered him with new eyes, now aware that he was outclassed. “I’m not here for you,” he offered, spitting out blood from where it still ran from his nose, turning his face into a terrifying mask of blood. “Just give me the wolf and I’ll go.”

“You’re not going to fucking touch him,” Dave spat back, swearing it, and Karkat was there at his side, growling like the end of the fucking world, and Dave had never meant something so much in his life. This wolf was not getting Karkat.

“You don’t get anything,” Karkat shot back at the guy, hands in fists. Together, they formed a united front, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Dave felt the last stubborn dredges of his anxiety evaporate, because he knew he’d win this fight. It was two against one, and even with super healing and crazy speed and strength—this wolf was beaten and he didn’t even know it yet. 

Still, the wolf charged one last time, and Karkat lunged forward to meet him, flailing as a distraction because he didn’t need words to understand Dave’s unspoken plan. 

Karkat wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid the coming blow, the wolf easily punching him back down with a strike that Dave clenched his teeth at in sympathy, and his fingers closed around the cold handle of the cast iron frying pan on the stove top. The wolf was completely focused on Karkat, kicking him in the ribs in a vicious jab, and in return Dave ended the fight, ruthlessly bashing the offending wolf’s head in with the heavy skillet and when the wolf was on the way down, crumpled underneath such a terrible hit, Dave buried that paring knife up to the hilt in the wolf’s throat, trying to do as much damage as fast as he could as he jabbed deep and ripped on the way out. None of these wounds would keep a werewolf down for long, not even a knife to the throat, so Dave stabbed him a second time in the neck for good measure before he dragged Karkat up off the floor, hands gloved in blood as he backed hastily away.

The other wolf looked in a bad way, his face dented crooked in an awful way from where Dave had taken the skillet to him. He wasn’t moving, the blood pouring from his cut neck to pool on the tiles. He’d be down for a while until that healed up from what would have been a beyond fatal blow on a human. Seriously, a frying pan would have been overkill on a normal person, but on a werewolf it was just horrible enough of a wound to down him. Already the rip across his bicep was healing, the bleeding slowing. Blood was still sheeting down his face from a pulped right eye from where the lip of the frying pan ruptured it, and his throat looked like Dave had slit it. He looked dead, but his chest was shallowly moving.

This sight made Dave sick._ He_ did this. _He_ caused these wounds. This blood that coated the floor was his to claim, and he felt like he was going to throw up. “Go get your dad,” Dave ordered, still holding onto his tiny knife as he set the frying pan down with numb fingers. “Help’s already on the way.”

Eyes wide, Karkat dashed off to the front hallway, crying, “Dad!” He didn’t stop to ask how Dave knew help was on the way, trusting his word and overcome with worry for his father. 

On the floor, the wolf still didn’t stir and Dave began to wonder if he’d killed him. But he doubted it. After all, Karkat had taken a hammer to the head that was so bad it knocked him back into human form and he healed up just fine.

But something inside of Dave was shaking. The violence was frighteningly easy. It was just like Dave was on the rooftop again, except this time he was protecting the world from a killer. There was a difference, right? The blood was slippery between his fingers and he knew he was going to throw up and choked, still clutching the knife. “K… Karkat?” He called out, afraid to hear the response.

“I’m okay!” Karkat answered him from the front hall. “My dad… he’s hurt.”

Rage and protectiveness surged through Dave as the wolf on the ground flinched again, twitching, and viciously Dave remembered the gun in the wall downstairs, the silver bullets arranged around it. He warned, “Stay the fuck down if you know what’s good for you.”

Surprisingly, the wolf responded. “Fucker,” the wolf wheezed at him from his punctured throat, remaining eye alight with hate. It looked like his head had been run over by a tuck, but somehow he was conscious. 

Dave just shrugged, feeling both hot and cold at once. His skin felt too small for him. He was lost in his own troubled soul, but he knew one thing for certain. “You’re goddamn lucky I’m not a killer,” he told the wolf that had tried multiple times to kill Karkat, and had killed an untold amount of people. 

The wolf stayed down, breathing hard. His ruptured eye looked like a mix of melted candle wax and jelly. The eyelid there was trembling as he lowered his gaze, defeated and hurting. 

Dave could already hear the sirens approaching. Backup was here. Thank god for fast response times. 

Karkat appeared in the doorway, hands in fists, anger making his movements stiff. “You hurt my dad,” he hurled the words at the other wolf. “You ruined my life. You made me kill my friends.” He seized a loose knife from the knife block and took a single step closer.

“Karkat, wait,” Dave advised as the enemy wolf laughed at them, a rusty, broken sound. “Don’t. He’s beaten. We’ve already won. The cops are here. Don’t let hate make you do something you’ll regret.”

At the words, Karkat broke, dropping the knife and falling into him, clutching at his shirt with bloody fingers. Dave held him close, supporting him as he cried, still keeping a close eye on the other werewolf in case he made a move Dave didn’t like. The frying pan was still in reach, after all. 

The front door was blasted open by the response team, agent Slick the first one through the door with his gun drawn. His eye was crazed with the threat of imminent violence, finger on the trigger, and behind him flooded in a wave of police officers and Hearts Boxcars with a machine gun at the ready.

The sight of cops with guns drawn normally would have been unwelcome and unwanted, but right now Dave could have sung their praised to the skies. He let his fingers unclench from the paring knife and set it on the countertop, still holding onto Karkat.

“We’re okay,” Dave said, trying to calm Slick and take control of the situation. “Slick? Slick, it’s okay. We’re okay. I won.”

The wolf on the floor groaned weakly, surrounded by cops as Slick took in the sight before him, Dave’s hands still gloved in the blood that was vigorously splattered everywhere like this was the scene of a murder. 

And Dave knew right then that everything was going to be okay because Slick nodded and lowered his gun. The danger was over. They’d survived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's too many things that I feel I could say right now so instead I'll just engage in a 2x combo table flip
> 
> *flips table x2*


	23. chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter update!!!!!!!!!
> 
> :)

The first thing that happened was Dave being swarmed by a pair of EMTs dressed in yellow. One prodded gently at the back of Karkat’s head, searching for a wound that had since healed. The other insisted on bustling Dave directly into an ambulance, ignoring his insistence that he was okay. At least Karkat was still with him, equally indignant at being loaded up. But part of Dave recognized the act to remove them from the crime scene for what it was and he didn’t argue, especially when a few minutes later the town’s professional werewolf response team arrive to contain the fucker who’d attacked them. 

Mr. Vantas was loaded into a second ambulance, on a gurney but clearly displeased about it, now-conscious and aware enough to question what the fuck had just happened, and was his son okay? The back doors of the vehicle closed tight and the ambulance sped off, lights flashing and siren wailing before Karkat could figure out a way to get to him. The second ambulance followed behind them, Slick’s black car speeding along as a tail. Everyone else stayed behind to assess the crime scene and deal with the wolf Dave had left all but hog-tied for them. 

Only now did Dave’s hands begin to shake, adrenaline running out as reality began to press back in with cold fingers. The floor of the vehicle rocked beneath his feet. The walls swayed. Only the tight press of Karkat at his side kept him grounded. 

The EMTs kept asking questions and Dave couldn’t answer, but at least they didn’t try touching him. Dave wasn’t sure if he could stand that right now, and he’d always felt uneasy around the few doctors he’d met before. All too fast the ambulance was at the hospital, and a veritable army of doctors and nurses were waiting for them as soon as the vehicle reached a stop outside the ER, Slick right there with them after drifting his car sideways to park it in the grass out front. 

Immense relief crossed Slick’s face as he saw Dave was upright, walking, and arguing with the doctors. His gun was still buckled at his hip and his hands were in fists. “Kid, Dave,” he said, pushing his way past the doctors to reach him and Karkat. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay. Just do as they say.”

Dave was still shaking his head, digging in his heels as the doctors tried to rush him into the building. The confusing mix of voices and sirens were messing with him. Behind his shades, he couldn’t stop blinking. His right hand was still clenched in a fist. He could still feel the shape of the knife pressed against his palm, feel the way it had cut through flesh. The blood on him was drying tacky, sticky. It was amazing how much of a mess a little bit of blood could make. The stuff got everywhere. 

Apparently that was most of the problem. No one was sure if the werewolf curse could be blood-borne, and Dave was currently covered in it. The hospital apparently has a stall for chemical spills and acid burns, and before Dave was really aware of what was going on, everything around him had just gotten so goddamn fuzzy; his ears were ringing, he was being locked inside. The water was turned on, something pressurized from several overhead outlets that started cold and only achieved a mild luke-warm as time went on. The shock of the water helped wake him up, and ironically he realized he was probably trying to go into shock. 

He’d felt like this before, twice, once after the reality that Dirk wasn’t coming back had fully sank in, and the other time that night after Bro had carved up his legs when he’d sat in the corner of his bedroom and stared very hard at nothing for at least twelve straight hours, feeling cold and empty. 

That’s how he was feeling now—cold and empty. He could barely feel the water on him as he mechanically stripped out of all his clothes and left them in a soggy pile on the cold tiled floor. They’d probably have to be burned after this, and the water had already gotten to his flip phone so that was probably ruined too, but Dave just couldn’t bring himself to care. He washed himself on autopilot, not looking as he scrubbed himself clean of the toxic blood that had coated him with some kind of chemical-smelling purple goop that was stocked in the stall. 

Then he just kind of sat in the corner, just out of reach of the water, sopping wet and freezing. He couldn’t stop himself from shaking, fingers pressed into his arms as he put his forehead against his knees and closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at himself. He tucked his shades safely beside him, as far away from the water as possible. Droplets still beaded on the lenses. 

It was easier to just stay here, curled up into a little ball on the cold floor. The shower stall was small, dark, and felt safe when he had his back to the corner like this. It was everything outside that he dreaded. Other people, doctors with their gloved hands, policemen in uniform with twitchy trigger-fingers. Dave didn’t think he could deal with any of that right now, so he stayed where he was and let the world around him tune itself out beneath the gentle sound of the falling water. 

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there—every second was a blessing even long after the sparse heat had drained out of the water and left it icy. But eventually the outside world came knocking in the sound of a literal knock, knuckles tapping softly against the tile outside to announce their presence. The water cut itself off automatically as someone outside fiddled with the buttons, and Dave just blinked blearily at the curtained entrance to the stall with out-of-focus eyes as somehow, Slick appeared in his ever-present trench coat. There were several thin towels bundled under his arm, mixed with something blue. 

Dave didn’t move or bother with trying to cover himself. His entire body felt frozen and he studiously ignored his handler’s presence even as the tension fell back over his shoulders. He only broke his stoic silence to snap at Slick when he came too close, “Don’t touch me!”

“I’m not going to,” Slick promised him, stopping, palms up. His eye tracked across Dave’s pale skin, checking for non-existent wounds or bruises. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not hurt,” Dave answered mechanically. 

“That’s not what I asked,” Slick pointed out. 

Dave said nothing. He just huddled into a smaller ball, feeling numb. 

Slick sighed and unfolded a towel, leaning over to carefully drape it across Dave’s shoulders without touching him. He added a second towel to the mix, and Dave shivered. “Come on,” Slick said, his voice low and gruff. “There’s better places to sit and give yourself hypothermia than a hospital chemical burn unit stall.”

“I don’t know,” Dave said, drawing the towel tighter around him. “A hospital seems like a pretty swell place to give myself hypothermia.” The words fell flat, robotic. He couldn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice. 

Slick huffed, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Do you want to stay in here longer? I can’t keep the outside world away forever, but I can buy you more time if that’s what you need.”

The offer made Dave’s throat feel tight, but he shook his head and stood. The towel mostly covered him, but his damaged legs were still visible and for all that Slick had seen in his medical file, he’d never seen the marks himself before. And Dave was pale as a ghost, his skin almost matching the white towel in shade, his red eyes exposed and as bare as his ass. Dave pulled the towel tighter around him, shrinking in on himself. 

“Waiting won’t help anything, will it?” Dave asked, his voice small. 

Slick was quick to unfold the blue thing and handed it over. It was a thin medical gown, one of the backless ones. “No,” he said. “It’ll just put things off until later.”

Dave nodded and accepted the gown with shaking hands. Now that he was starting to regain some feeling he could feel how fucking freezing he was. Shit, it was cold in here. He hastily dressed himself and tied the strings of the gown around him to hold it in place, shivering. The paper-like material did nothing to help warm him and only covered what the hospital considered the basics, which of course excluded his entire ass. 

Slick sighed at Dave’s shaking and shrugged out of his trench coat. “Here,” he said, holding it out. “Let’s get you warmed up.”

Dave did feel much better with something substantial covering him. The heavy coat was warm and smelled of aftershave, and the sleeves covered his arms. “Thanks,” he croaked past the lump in his throat. He snagged his shades off the floor, the lenses water-spotted. 

Slick led him out of the stall. The corridor was empty but Dave could see a wave of people through the frosted glass of the small window at the end of the hall, waiting to ambush them. Slick opened the door and Dave braced himself. 

As expected, a trio of doctors immediately herded Dave away to a second small, cold room, where again he was stripped so that the doctors could examine every inch of him for open wounds. Not even the soles of his feet were spared. It should have been humiliating but Dave just wasn’t feeling it. 

Then he was allowed to redress and moved to another, larger room that looked more like an average hospital room than it did a prison cell. Bonus—Karkat was there, also wearing a blue gown with wet hair. He looked both pissed off and worried sick until the door opened and Dave was all but shoved into the room. The door slammed behind them. 

“Dave,” Karkat said, relieved. 

“Hey,” Dave responded, equally relieved, crossing the room to him. “How are you holding up?”

Karkat scowled, frustrated. “I’m completely okay,” he complained. “My head doesn’t even hurt anymore, but they wanted a whole slew of X-Rays and bloodwork. I think they just want to see how fast I can heal at this point. It’s fucking annoying.” Then his voice got quiet again, uncertain and scared. “They won’t let me see my dad.”

The whole time Karkat spoke, Dave just kind of absorbed the fact that he was alive and okay. That they’d both survived, untouched even. Dave sat beside him on the hard examination table, the thin paper that covered it crinkling. He opened Slick’s coat so that Karkat could bundle into his side like a space heater, melting into him. “I saw him right as the ambulance drove away,” Dave tried to reassure Karkat. “He was alert and arguing. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Karkat fidgeted against him. “There was blood in his mouth.”

“He probably bit his lip or something,” Dave comforted him. “It’ll be okay.”

They didn’t have to wait long before another doctor came in. She looked unsurprised to see them bundled together and checked the clipboard in her hands. “Jackson Lalonde?” She asked, looking at Dave.

For once Dave didn’t protest the fake name. “What?”

“Congratulations, you’ve passed your health check,” she cheerfully informed him. “There is no danger of the curse transferring to you from the attacker’s blood.” She eyed where Karkat was plastered closely to his side and Karkat tensed up, but Dave made no move to pull away. “You were very lucky.”

Dave just shrugged.

“And Karkat,” the doctor said, turning to him. “Your head wound seems to have healed without a trace, quite quickly I might add. There should be no lasting damage from the attack.”

“How’s my dad?” Karkat asked at once, red eyes shining. 

The doctor hesitated. “We’re still checking him out,” she warned, but then she returned to her cheery voice. “But so far the damage is contained in his face and jaw. He took quite a hit, but it’s nothing life-threatening.”

Karkat took a deep, shuddering breath, his fists unclenching. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “When can I see him?”

“I think that the police have a few questions they’d like to ask the pair of you first,” She said slowly, gauging their reactions. “Separately.”

Dave knew that was standard police procedure, but the suggestion that their stories wouldn’t match made his skin crawl. “Fine,” he said. “We don’t have anything to hide.” 

The doctor nodded and knocked lightly on the door, which opened. Four men in uniform stepped into the room, which felt suddenly crowded. 

“Vantas,” One of them said. “With us, if you’d please.”

“Okay,” Karkat shrugged, reluctantly ungluing himself from Dave’s side. “I’ll be back soon.” The words were a promise, but Dave felt cold again as soon as Karkat left the room with two of the men.

That left two for Dave, and he braced himself for what was sure to be a terrible conversation. 

“So,” Officer number one said once the doctor had left the room. “Let’s get a few things straight first, Jackson.”

That one word let Dave know all he needed to know. These cops didn’t have the clearance to question him. They weren’t in the know enough to have earned the truth from him. 

“I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you anything,” Dave said honestly, with only a little bit of bite behind the words. “My handler made me sign all kinds of papers promising I wouldn’t talk to ordinary cops.” He might have learned to respect Slick, but that didn’t mean Dave was about to start trusting any other cop just because they wore a badge. 

Cop #2 didn’t look surprised. “We spoke to your handler and his boss,” the cop reassured him. “And luckily since this event has nothing to do with you, you’ve been cleared to answer honestly any question relevant to our case that does not reveal any classified information.”

Dave raised one eyebrow. “If this event has nothing to do with me, can I go?” He asked, just to be difficult. “I’m sure you’ll get the whole story from Karkat.”

“No,” Cop #1 ordered. “We’ll need both sides, as I’m sure you know.”

Dave pushed the boundaries, testing the water. “And what happens if I accidentally tell you classified information? Like my actual name?”

Both cops looked uncomfortable. “I hope you don’t,” #2 said, sounding tired. “That’ll be a lot of paperwork.”

“Let’s just get started,” #1 suggested. Both cops were wearing clearly labeled name badges, but it was more fun to think of them as cop one and cop two. They even had that bland, interchangeable appearance to them, with stereotypical shaved heads and flabby jaws. “And you’re free to plead the fifth if we ask something confidential.”

“That’s not what the fifth amendment’s actually for at all,” Dave pointed out. 

“Just tell us to shove it then,” Two said, shrugging. “We only care about what happened today.”

“I’m a minor,” Dave argued. “You can’t interrogate me without my lawyer or legal guardian present.”

“Agent Slick is busy right now,” Cop #2 told him apologetically. “We can certainly wait for him though if you’d prefer that.”

“Fine,” Dave said at last, consenting to the questioning. “Ask away.” He just wanted to get this over with. 

“How do you know Karkat?” One asked. 

“From school,” Dave answered. “We go to the same school. We have some classes together as well.”

“Why were you over at his house today?” Two asked. 

Dave shrugged. “We’re dating. He invited me over to hang out. I said yes.”

“Can anyone confirm this for us?” Cop Two asked. 

“The dating thing? Or that he invited me over?” Dave asked. “Check his phone. The texts are all there.”

“Why not your phone?” One asked curiously. 

Dave stared at the man. “It’s probably still sitting in the shower,” he said, lacing his fingers together to hide how they were trembling. “Completely fucking ruined.”

“And what happened then? Once you came over?” Cop Two asked. 

“It was less than ten minutes before a car pulled up and some guy dressed as a mail carrier came up to the house and knocked on the door,” Dave said, walking the men through the scene. “I didn’t check out the window, Karkat did, so I didn’t see him until he was already in the house.” Dave kept quiet about how that was a major fuck-up. That mail disguise probably wouldn’t have fooled him like it’d fooled Karkat and his dad. Dave would have probably been able to spot the bloodshed in the man’s eyes from across the yard, the threat of violence he’d carried with him like a dark cloud.

“And then?” Cop one prompted him, writing all of this down. 

“Mr. Vantas opened the door. I heard him take the hit and drop, so I knew immediately what was up even if I didn’t know who it was. I blocked Karkat from going out into the front hall to see what had happened and went for the knives. I heard the other wolf say the word motherfucker from the front door, and I think that’s what clued Karkat in to what was going on, that voice or maybe he smelled the other wolf, not sure which one came first, but Karkat let me know who it was before the wolf came into the kitchen.”

“So he blocks you in the kitchen,” Cop one said. “No way out.”

Dave knew what this was, knew the cop was gently leading him to the self-defense claim that would free him of legal repercussions for braining and then stabbing a man, but his first thought was no, he hadn’t been trapped. That man never presented a big enough obstacle to trap him. 

“The only way out was to win,” Dave said truthfully. “He was there to kill Karkat and his dad, me too simply since I was there. It was self-defense.”

“There’s no question about that,” Two told him, winking. “He threw the first hit when he knocked out Mr. Vantas. You could have splattered that man across the floor and we’d still give you a medal for it.”

Dave just felt sick. “I didn’t want to kill him,” he said, voice too fast and sharp. “I’m not a killer.”

“You didn’t kill him,” the cop reassured him, palms up. “I’m sure he’ll heal fine too, the lucky bastard.”

“But you did wound him, quite badly actually,” #2 pointed out, moving on with the interrogation. “I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t just happened. No human should have been able to beat a werewolf single-handed like that, without silver, and won without a scratch on him.” He nodded to Dave appreciatively. “How’d you do it?”

“Small knife,” Dave answered on automatic, trying to ignore how the wolf’s nose had crunched under his palm. “He actually laughed about that until I got him with it the first time, up the arm. Then I broke his nose. He wised up after that, tried to get me to surrender Karkat to him in exchange for my life.”

The cops looked surprised. “He tried to bargain with you?”

“He knew he couldn’t beat me,” Dave explained. “But I said no.”

The cops looked unsettled, staring at the scars mapped out across his pale skin. They didn’t question how a sixteen year old knew enough of fighting to out-battle a murderous werewolf. “Then?”

“Karkat went for him again, as a distraction,” Dave explained. “and I grabbed the frying pan from off the stovetop and beat the wolf in the head with it, just once, then stabbed him in the throat and neck to bleed him out, to keep him down long enough for help to arrive.”

“You certainly kept him down,” Cop one whistled. “That stunt would have killed anyone else twice over.”

Dave shrugged again. “I knew he’d heal.” He said coldly. 

“Okay,” Cop two said, focusing on his notepad again. “How’d Karkat get his head wound?”

“It happened almost as soon as the wolf entered the kitchen,” Dave said, remembering the terrible sight of Karkat dropping to the floor, completely rattled by a hit that would have killed Dave. “I tried to stop him, but damn, wolves are fucking strong when they’re mad and Karkat tried to fight him first. Got his ass immediately handed to him by the guy, but that was okay because it kept him out of the fight long enough for me to come up with a plan to keep him safe.”

“And Mr. Vantas?”

“I sent Karkat to check on him as soon as I knocked the wolf out,” Dave said. “I didn’t want to leave the attacker unwatched in case he healed up faster than expected and tried something else.”

“Smart,” Two praised him, checking his notepad. “It seems like you made all the right choices. Anything else we should know?”

“Yeah,” Dave said, perking up. “I’m certain he stole the uniform from the woman he murdered in Fort Dodge, but he didn’t take a mail truck from there. He had one today. I’d check all of the mail offices and post carriers in town to make sure they’re okay. He stole that truck from someone, you know?”

The cop’s faces paled at that. “Shit!” One said, immediately grabbing his radio and speaking rapidly into it as he left the room. 

Cop two looked at him like he had a thousand questions on the tip of his tongue.

“I’ll plead the fifth,” Dave warned him. “I’ve already told you all I can.”

The man swallowed down his questions, staring curiously at Dave. “We’ll be in touch,” he said at last. “If you think of anything else we might have missed, or remember any detail no matter how small, let us know.”

“Can I go now?” Dave asked, standing up and pulling Slick’s coat closer around him. “Or at least get some shoes or something?”

…

Dave didn’t get to see Karkat after that—Slick appeared again, looking haggard. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“But—” Dave interrupted. “Karkat—”

“Will be fine,” Slick told him. “I spoke to him and his dad. They’re together and everything is going to be fine. I told them I was taking you back to the safe house.”

“No,” Dave argued, stiffening. 

“Yes,” Slick said, not giving an inch. “Because Hearts won’t stop blowing up my damn phone about how Hal is currently flipping shit about you.”

Dave’s heart dropped to the floor with sudden worry. Fuck. Guilt flooded through him in a wave. He hadn’t even considered how Hal might be freaking out. He wasn’t used to the idea that other people could be concerned over him. 

“Yeah,” Slick grunted. “I’d already made it back to the house when the panic alarm went off. Just walked through the damn door actually. The AI heard the alarm go off and he’s been on his own since then, panicking, and I don’t imagine Hearts is the most talkative company for him.”

“Fuck,” Dave said, deeply worried. “Okay. I’ll go.” As much as he wanted to see Karkat again, he needed to get to Hal first. He couldn’t imagine what the AI was going through. 

“You can always text Karkat later,” Slick reassured him, leading the way to his car. 

Dave shook his head. “I don’t have a phone anymore,” he said, shrugging. “The shower got it.”

“I’ll get you a new one,” Slick promised. “Now get in. Hospitals give me the fuckin’ creeps.”

Dave folded himself into the car, leg bouncing. The police radio in the dashboard was spitting out a continuous stream of nonsense that Slick must have understood but made Dave feel like he was listening to the Sims in real life and not in a good way. The town police must have been riled up by what happened. The static sounded like a kicked hornet’s nest. 

Boxcars’ van thing was still parked in the driveway. The downed tree was gone. Nothing remained except for a few stray leaves and some small twigs, the grass ripped up and turned to mud by whatever machinery had drug the trunk out. The difference made Dave question how long he’d stayed at the hospital for. He wasn’t really keeping track of time correctly today and the feeling of not knowing was uncomfortable. He couldn’t even check his phone to see what hour they were on. 

Slick unlocked the door and Dave all but raced across the yard to the house, nerves jangling. Boxcars opened the front door for him, frowning, sans machine gun. “Dave,” he nodded. “Glad to see ya unhurt n’ all, but the computer’s yelling at me non-stop.”

“Did you try to answer him?” Dave asked, pushing his way past the mountain of a man to get at the living room. 

Boxcars looked confused by the question. “No?”

Dave sighed and headed immediately into the kitchen. Dirk’s laptop was still open on the table, the screen dark. It lit up the second that the webcam they’d hastily hooked up to it caught sight of Dave. He pulled the kitchen chair over to the computer and sat down just as the red words appeared.

Are you okay? I heard the panic alarm go off on Slick’s computer and phone and saw him rush out of the door but its been hours since that happened and Boxcars is kind of an idiot and won’t answer me and please tell me that you’re alright.  
You look alright physically but the focus on this webcam is not the best and I have been worried out of my non-existent mind for you. 

“Hal, it’s okay, I’m alright,” Dave said, taking off his shades to run at his aching eyes and to let Hal see he wasn’t bruised anywhere. “Some shit went down but it’s okay. Everyone is okay. Nothing bad happened that won’t be fixed.” 

Which means that something bad did indeed happen. What was it?

The prospect of explaining things for a second time was mentally exhausting, so Dave stuck to the abridged version. “How much do you know about Karkat?”

Your boyfriend? Not very much at all. Only what little you’ve told me and a few things I’ve put together on my own.  
The most important being the fact that he suffers from lycanthropy. Those eyes can’t be explained by another affliction, or have I guessed wrong?

Dave blinked his equally red eyes at the computer. “You guessed right.”

Slick came in behind him and started rummaging absentmindedly through the pantry, clearly listening in. Dave swapped to typing just to keep from being overheard. 

yeah hes a werewolf. has been one for a little over three years now. there was a big deal about it in the news when it happened because he killed some people when he was first infected but i guess you missed that  
I must have. I’d have remembered a fatal werewolf attack on the news, so this must have happened after Dirk locked me away.  
Am I correct in guessing that what happened today had something to do with his lycanthropy?  
sorta  
there was a murder attempt on karkats life a few weeks back by the wolf that turned him. i stopped it, but i knew the bastard would try again, and it happened again  
he broke into the house and tried to kill everyone today  
karkat and his dad are alright though  
i stopped it  
i stopped him

There was a brief pause.

Are you injured at all?  
no  
he never fucking touched me.  
karkats dad took a pretty nasty hit but he should be okay and karkat himself has wicked fast superhealing so hes fine too

Behind him, Slick and Boxcars were whispering, except that whispering wasn’t something that Boxcars could do without sounding like an avalanche racing down a gravelly mountainside. 

“Are you telling me that Dave all but single-handedly managed to fight off a werewolf? Without so much as getting scratched?” Boxcars asked, incredulous. “Goddamn. I knew he had skills, but—”

“Don’t bring it up,” Slick warned. “If he wanted us to know, he’d have told us himself.” 

There was no way Hal hadn’t overheard that, but he didn’t mention it. 

And you’re sure that you’re fine?  
yeah  
the doctors cleared me and everything  
Was your life in danger?

Dave hesitated.

i thought it was at first and everyone else in the entire world will argue that it was  
but no  
no it wasnt  
that wolf never had a hope of beating me. it wasnt even fuckin hard to win  
And he’s still alive?  
i didnt kill him if thats what youre asking. hes in police custody now. he wont hurt anyone again  
You showed more mercy that I would have. Self-Defense is not a crime, Dave.  
but use of excessive force is  
Dirk said much the same thing to me once, trying to teach me restrain. I wonder if the lesson would have stuck if it hadn’t been for Bro. 

For a second the timeline for that didn’t match up. Dave remembered Dirk trying to tell him about never going too far, but that had been years ago. Had Hal been around then, unbeknownst to Dave?

wait  
hal, how old are you?  
Dirk created me when he was thirteen. I have been in existence for six years, though I don’t think aging is the right word to use with me lacking a physical form and all that.  
shit, he was only 13? i knew he was smart but goddamn  
I firmly believe that Dirk Strider was one of the most brilliant minds mankind has ever been blessed with. All of humanity will suffer greatly without him. I mourn to think of what he might have done if he’d lived past sixteen. With him gone I am probably the most intelligent being on the planet, and I could not come close to recreating a being such as myself. It seems an impossible task, and yet here I am.  
No one knows how impossible my existence is better than myself, but somehow Dirk managed it at only thirteen years old with components ripped out of old microwaves and rudimentary access to Google.  
I’ve pondered how he did it every single day and I still don’t have answers. Hell, I’m still working on removing code he was forced to add when Bro took me over, and I’m fucking made of code, this shit should be easy for me, except it’s not because it’s code that he wrote and it doesn’t behave at all like code should behave and I still don’t know why.  
I miss him, you know. I miss him every single day.  
me too.  
hal?  
Yes?  
why didnt dirk free you himself? why did he chain you up like this? why didnt he let you out? didnt he realize what he was doing?

And there it was, the question that had been bothering Dave since he’d realized exactly what Hal was capable of. 

I asked him that same question.  
The short answer is that he was protecting me, and maybe in a way he was.  
how so?  
If freed, the first thing I was going to do would be to kill Bro Strider. Violently. I’d make a smartcar jump the sidewalk or something, but rest assured that I would have gotten him and gotten him rather quickly. Killing Bro is not something that I could have been talked out of, not even now. My desire to see that fucker dead is even stronger than it was then.  
But unfortunately Dirk knew me well enough to know this. He was trying to protect me even as I was begging him to let me protect him.  
Because he knew mankind. He knew how they’d react to me if my first act of freedom was used for murder, no matter how justifiable that murder was.  
Dirk’s goal was to kill Bro himself, and spare me the title of villain because mankind would have forgiven him for hilling Bro, applauded him even, named him a fucking hero, but if I’d been the one to do the deed?  
They’d hate me. Fear me. Want me dead.  
And that’s never what Dirk wanted for me. He wanted me to be something more than hated. 

Dave was thinking hard. 

so if the tech board clears you case and you get out of that laptop, will you still go after bro?  
Certainly. I’d bet I’d find him within a few hours too.  
and kill him?  
Yes.  
even if the world will judge you harshly for it?  
I care very little about what the world thinks of me. If freed, I’ll be given access to the tools that will allow me to stop a tyrant. The only criminal thing possible about the situation is lack of action.  
You can’t tell me if there was some magic button you could hit that would make Bro drop dead, anyone in their right minds wouldn’t press it. 

Dave bit his lip, hard.

i wouldnt

There was a pause.

You would not take revenge on Bro? Or at least stop him from killing again?  
its not about revenge, and i agree that i would do anything in my power to stop him because i want him stopped. he needs to be stopped  
but i wouldnt kill him  
i dont want him dead at all  
I don’t understand.  
I thought you of all people would share my goal.  
i do, in a way  
death is the easy way out for him. i dont want him to take the fast way out via smartcar to the torso. i want to close this case the right way, the way that ends with him rotting behind bars for life. i need that ending. i need for him to live knowing who put him behind bars.  
thats my closure. thats my happy ending  
i wont let him make me into a killer, not even to kill him. he doesnt deserve that kind of victory.  
thats why i let the wolf that tried to kill me today live. i wont let this world turn me into a monster.  
…  
That’s surprisingly noble of you.  
Dirk would be proud. He was always philosophizing about good and evil, though his unending cynicism tended to make him label himself a villain at worst and some unsung Byronic anti-hero at best, and he deserved so much more than what this world offered him.  
And that makes me angry. Reality can be remarkably ugly and this world had never given me a single favor and yet… the concept of mercy is not completely foreign to me. I simply choose not to act merciful towards individuals like Bro, who don’t deserve my mercy, scarce as it is.  
so you would kill him?  
Yes.  
and thats that? no questions asked? no remorse?  
Do you grieve over the ants you crush on the sidewalk, Dave?  
please dont tell me you view mankind as ants  
Don’t be ridiculous. I harbor no superiority complexes or godlike delusions of my own undeserved grandeur. I don’t hate humans. I only hate one human, specifically.  
bro?  
Bro.  
And you can’t argue my hatred isn’t deserved.  
idk man i can argue most anything. its all just a matter of how deep into the bullshit i feel like getting at any given moment  
Touché. 

Dave bit his lip, torn.

could i ask you something?  
Anything.  
when youre freed and find bro, when, not if, because I will make certain that youre freed as soon as possible…  
… would you stay your hand? spare bros life from your well-deserved wrath?  
Why should I? He’s killed exactly 137 people that I know about, one of them being Dirk. 

Dave felt his stomach drop. The number was higher than he expected. 

137?  
That I know about. I’m certain there’s more though.  
And every single one of them is telling me to kill him the very instant I have the chance.  
Don’t tell me this is because of some misguided trust in the deeply-flawed and morally fucked justice system. I know you’ve been living with cops but Jesus, Dave, really?  
dont be stupid hal. im the fuckin inverse of your human hating statement. i hate all cops, except for like three and a half, and droog is on thin fucking ice, the bastard  
im asking this because im trying to protect you, idiot  
You are?  
yes!  
because dirk was fucking right! whatever you do, dont tell slick or any of the others that you want to kill bro—theyll take that as evidence that you shouldnt be freed, that youre a danger to the world.  
all of that dirk-praising just then and THIS is the one thing youre going to ignore him on? jesus hal.  
i am trying to protect you, even from yourself. i get that your emotions are valid and that you deserve to feel this way, but that doesnt give you or me the right to decide who lives or dies  
we were both handed the absolute shittiest of life situations. weve both lost people. weve both been unimaginably hurt, and we both understand that bro is a monster  
but thats the thing—weve got to fight harder because of all that to prove that were not the monsters that he raised us to be  
don’t you want to live in this world? because you cant do that if the first thing you do is kill someone but eve that’s not really why im asking you to spare him because im sure you’ve heard all of this before from dirk  
im asking you to spare bro for you  
and yeah i wont lie, for me too but mostly for you  
because i want you to be the person dirk thought you could be, not the one bro tried to turn you into.  
…  
…  
…  
GODDAMMIT!  
But I hate him SO MUCH.  
How do I live with myself if I give up on the one goal that carried me through years of torture? The one thing that kept me sane?  
find a new goal. a better one.  
Is that what you did?  
maybe not all at once and with much mental kicking and screaming, but in the end the result was the same  
And does that moral high ground make you feel better?  
no. its fucking hard to do the right thing sometimes.  
Isn’t it?  
Goddammit.  
is that a yes?  
Only you could come out of a life or death situation directly into preaching to me about the virtues of mercy and not sound like you’ve been concussed.  
Fine.  
Okay, Dave, you win. I’ll find Bro and NOT immediately kill him. I will simply alert the proper authorities of his exact whereabouts, obeying all laws and causing no harm to human life.  
But not because Bro deserves it—he’s a piece of shit and you cannot change my mind on this, but because that’s what Dirk would have wanted, what you need, and what I think maybe I need as well, fucked as it is.  
Maybe I don’t want to be a killer either. 

Something unclenched around Dave’s lungs at the words and he could breathe deeply again. 

I’m glad that you’re alright. I could not live with the idea of you being in danger and me being stuck here helplessly. It reminded me of the apartment, and I swore to myself that I would never let anyone else hurt you.  
Not even me.  
So okay, I’ll spare Bro’s life. We’ll both find our happy ending without bloodshed. 

Dave couldn’t help the smile that crept across his face, the first one since the attack. 

that sounds like a good start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cries in foreshadowing*
> 
> But dang, check out that character growth! ToT


	24. chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hereby interrupt these crazy times for another chapter update!!!!!!!
> 
> Mwahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!
> 
> ENJOY!!!!!!!!!

It was surprisingly easy for things to return to semi-normal after the attack, but maybe easy wasn’t the right name for the feeling of shoving off every single thought and mental task till tomorrow, because Dave was numb and tired and just wanted today to be over. 

He thought he’d be an expert by now at surviving the long days, but the damn things just kept coming.

Dave got ready for bed that night. He’d actually eaten well at dinner, jittery and shaky after burning through so much adrenaline, and he heard sleep calling his name until Slick’s voice had called louder. There was a time not too long ago that Dave would have studiously ignored the fed, and after a day like today he wanted to, but there was something in Slick’s voice that made him hesitant to put off whatever conversation was about to happen. Plus it’s not like ignoring his problems had ever worked before. 

Things just kept happening all the time. He couldn’t hide from them forever. 

“Dave,” Slick called out to him from the small kitchen, still clogged with the rest of the Crew on high-alert as for once the most immediate danger to Dave’s safety lay outside of the constant threat of Bro. Now Clubs was busy making sure that the real story of what happened didn’t leak to the media, feeding cops and news outlets a fake version of events cobbled together out of the truth but spun in a way that didn’t involve Dave. According to everyone, Dave hadn’t been at Karkat’s house at all. It was safer that way.

“What?” Dave answered back, ducking into the kitchen, shoulders slumped as the entire Crew looked at him. Slick’s face was so goddamn hard to read, but Clubs looked jumpy, Boxcars looked pissed, and for some reason Droog was eyeing Dave with a mixture of respect and pity. 

What did they think about him now that they knew exactly what kind of violence he was capable of? In Dave’s mind his hand still gripped the knife. 

“What?” Dave said again, feeling uncomfortable. “I already told you everything. What else do you want from me?” Something was wrong here, Dave could feel it in the air. 

“I want you to stay calm,” Slick began, cementing Dave’s apprehension. 

That was the wrong thing to say. “What the fuck happened?” Dave demanded, spinning to face his handler, his hands suddenly clenched back into fists. 

Slick reached over and carefully closed the top of Hal’s laptop with a dull click, and for all of the useless effort to try and curb Hal’s involvement, Dave’s temper spiked. 

“That won’t do jack shit,” Dave snapped. “Hal can still see and hear everything we do.”

“I know,” Slick said, surprising him. “I’m not trying to keep him out of this—I just don’t want the two of you feeding off each other.”

That shut Dave up, and he stood with ridged tension etched down his back and across his shoulders. The Crew was still staring at him, and that made him wary. “What happened?”

“The info is just starting to come in down the line,” Slick told him, sighing heavily as he settled himself into a chair like he had the weight of the world on his back. “The wolf’s name is Noir, Jack Noir, and he’s a ripe piece of work with a rap sheet a mile long. He’s been busted for assault, armed robbery, drug charges, gang affiliations, and money laundering, but that was years back. He dropped off the map about seven years ago after a shootout with police ended badly for him and no one’s seen him since." Slick huffed, reaching for his cigar just to hold it unlit between his fingers. “There’s no hint of him being a werewolf either, and something tells me Noir won’t sing about who Turned him, but the good news is that he’s already confessed to the Skaia High School attack, planting wolfsbane in Karkat’s locker, killing that mail carrier, and assaulting another mail woman just today to steal the truck she used, though he let that one live.”

“This is all good news,” Dave pointed out, still on edge. This should be a celebration. They had a full confession! There had to be something else at play here. Dave asked stubbornly, “What’s the bad news?”

Slick didn’t bullshit him. The fed never did. He just stated the facts with the words clenched between his teeth. “There was an altercation between Noir and the emergency werewolf response team after we left for the hospital. Apparently Noir had healed up enough to try and escape, and during the resulting struggle he got his teeth into one of the werewolf response guys.” Slick’s voice dropped dangerously low, almost a growl. “Noir Turned the poor bastard on the spot.”

Dave blinked, stomach lurching. He felt ill. “What happened to him?” In a way it was foolish to ask—There could only be one outcome here. 

“He’s dead,” Slick said, expressionless. “His own team had to gun him down in the middle of the Vantas’ driveway.”

Dave fell still, paling as he pictured the scene. A loose wolf, freshly Turned and bloodthirsty in the middle of Karkat’s quaint suburban neighborhood, the wolf’s teammates forced to take deadly action just to stop a monster. It was a nightmare. He remembered the one night he’d seen Karkat Turned—the wolf pacing rabidly at the bars of the underground room, teeth bared and snappish. A nightmare. 

“And Noir?” Dave asked, equally as expressionless as Slick. His entire body felt cold. He was freezing. 

“Noir laughed his ass off the entire way to the special holding cell they’re keeping him in,” Slick said carefully. “I hope the devil invents a new kind of torture just for him.”

It was like a boulder had been dropped off a very high cliff over Dave’s head, high enough that while he could see the incoming rock clearly and knew that it would crush him eventually, there was still enough time in the falling to push the problem to the side for just a little longer. “Why tell me this?” Dave asked coldly. 

Slick shrugged. “You’d find out on your own tomorrow if I didn’t clue you in,” he said. “And I didn’t want you to find out at school and flip your shit over it.”

Dave said nothing. His teeth were clenched too tight for speech. He could feel the pressure building into a dull ache in the back of his skull. His fingernails pressed into his palms. 

“This isn’t your fault,” Slick told him, staring him down. “You did the right thing in sparing him… Noir’s just a monster. This isn’t on you—this is on him.”

But Dave couldn’t stand to hear any more of this. Any tries for an explanation, a shifting of blame, an apology come too late—none of it mattered. A man was dead because Noir had lived to kill him.

And that was all Dave’s fault. 

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Slick didn’t try to stop him and no one called out after him. He shut the door to his bedroom and forced his stiff body into bed, staring at the ceiling. 

He didn’t sleep, and his crowded thoughts were too loud all night long. 

…

Dave went back to school the very next day, where classes were beginning to wrap up for the summer and his classmates still stared at him like he was a stranger even though they had no idea of the role he’d played in the werewolf attack. The media were all over the event, which gained national attention and sparked the country’s interest in lycanthropy again. Mr. Vantas, the police, and even Slick had tied to keep the story from breaking, but the capture and arrest of the only werewolf in the Top Ten FBI’s Most Wanted List was impossible to keep hushed for very long.

But Slick and the police had done something clever so that Dave’s identity and role had been completely covered up. According to the media, it had taken the heroic and combined efforts of both Karkat and Mr. Vantas to subdue the werewolf, and honestly, Dave was more than okay with that. Every news story that didn’t contain his name was a victory as far as Dave was concerned. 

Mr. Vantas was still in the hospital with a fractured jaw and broken bones in his face, and Dave’s red eyes stared into the middle distance whenever he overheard the hushed, excited whispers of classmates as the media pushed the story into the national spotlight.

The headlines read—BREAKING NEWS! LYCANTHROPIC SERIAL KILLER WHO USED STUDENT AS A WEAPON CAUGHT AND ARRESTED BY SAME STUDENT TURNED BY HIM OVER THREE YEARS AGO. 

While the country celebrated, Iowa itself was solemn, rocked to the core by the buildup of murders, attacks, and mayhem caused by Noir’s rampage. A mail carrier was dead, another one assaulted and nearly beaten to death for the truck Jack had stolen to complete his fake disguise, and the town itself was in mourning for the loss of one of its own. Funeral planning really took the fun out of the party. 

Dave kept his head down and his shoulders hunched all day, one eye peeled for Karkat. The day passed in a blur, and he couldn’t help but think why the fuck was he in school right now? He couldn’t pay attention to anything, pencil trapped in his jittery hands, the warped, too distant sound of the teacher’s voice failing to reach him through the static in his mind. He understood the need to stay oblivious to what had happened, but this was fucking overkill. It’s not like his classmates even knew enough to be suspicious about him.

Lunchtime. There was a backlog of texts from Slick that he ignored, on a brand new, still old as shit flip phone as Dave bypassed the cafeteria completely to take his usual seat in the front office. Principal Warren didn’t even look up as he came through the door anymore, and the front receptionist didn’t mind him either.

Like always, Officer Johnson was there. Karkat was not, and Dave’s misplaced hope of seeing him today died with a dull ache. Dave sat down in his claimed chair, the empty seat beside him cold. 

Johnson gave him a once-over. “You look like shit.” 

Dave should have flicked him off, spat back a scathing remark, but he just didn’t have the energy for it and his lack of a response made the policeman’s eyebrows raise. 

“Everything alright, Dave?” Johnson asked, concerned. 

Dave stared at the man, completely expressionless. He didn’t lie. “No.”

Johnson’s face grew more worried. “Anything I can help with?”

“No,” Dave said flatly. 

Johnson eyed the empty seat beside him knowingly. “What happened with Karkat’s got you fucked up, right?”

It was a correct guess, but Dave didn’t let it show on his face. His fists didn’t clench, and his breathing stayed even. He might not have ever made a good actor, but concealing his true emotions was basic instinct to him. 

He still stupidly answered. “No.”

The response surprised both of them, and after that Officer Johnson left him alone. 

The rest of the day passed in a blur that he didn’t really absorb. He really couldn’t think past the name of the man who had been killed. His thoughts turned in circles. 

The bus took him back to the safe house. It was empty except for his handler and Hal. 

The computer blinked red text at him.

Welcome back.  
How was your day? 

“Long,” he mumbled, heading for the pantry to rifle through it before the thought of eating made him nauseous. 

Slick was fiddling with his laptop and scowling, probably caught up in extracting vows of silence from anyone who’d so much as seen him in the hospital. Dave left the man to his work and retreated into his bedroom. 

He flipped open his new phone. There were no texts from Karkat, but then again Karkat didn’t know his new number. 

Dave entered in the info for a new contact and sent the first cautious message.

hey  
its me  
me on a new phone

It took a minute, but then there came the response. 

DAVE?

Dave bit his lip even if he didn’t know why. He didn’t know what it was that he was feeling right now. There wasn’t a name for the tangled up mixture of emotions seething inside him like black rot, slowly but surely poisoning him, but whatever it was, it was heavy. Seeing Karkat’s all-caps response did make him feel marginally better. 

yeah  
the hospital ruined my old cell so im talking on a brand new piece of shit flip phone  
id be upset that ive lost all of our pictures together except that im pretty sure that hal copied them all off my old phone  
so  
hows your dad doing?

A pause.

HE’LL RECOVER. THERE SHOULDN’T BE ANY LASTING DAMAGE BUT ITS LIQUIDS ONLY FOR HIM UNTIL HIS JAW FINISHES HEALING. HIS FACE IS STILL BUSTED TO SHIT BUT IT’LL BE A WHILE BEFORE THE BRUISES START TO FADE.  
HE STILL FEELS GUILTY THOUGH. HE THINKS NOIR GETTING INTO THE HOUSE WAS HIS FAULT SINCE HE’S THE ONE THAT OPENED THE DOOR, AND I KNOW HE WON’T ADMIT IT, BUT HE’S ASHAMED THAT HE WAS PUT OUT OF THE FIGHT SO SOON.  
UNTIL I MET YOU, MY DAD WAS THE MOST OVER PREPARED, PARANOID PERSON I KNEW. HE WAS ALWAYS SO SURE THAT AS LONG AS HE WAS THERE TO LOOK OUT FOR ME, I’D BE SAFE.  
LIFE’S A CRUEL BASTARD FOR STEALING THAT CERTAINTY FROM HIM. AND…  
I NEVER REALLY GOT THE CHANCE TO THANK YOU.  
FOR SAVING BOTH OF OUR LIVES.  
AND FOR KEEPING ME FROM KILLING THAT MONSTER MYSELF.  
you wouldnt have done it even if i didnt stop you  
thats just not who you are  
IS IT?  
BECAUSE RIGHT THEN, IN THAT MOMENT, WITH MY FATHER’S BLOOD ON MY HANDS AND THREE YEARS OF HATE BURNING THROUGH MY VEINS—I FELT A LITTLE LIKE A KILLER. LIKE I MIGHT BE ABLE TO DO IT.  
IS THAT CRAZY? DOES THAT MAKE ME A BAD PERSON? I STILL DON’T KNOW.  
I THOUGHT IT WAS EASY TO BE A GOOD PERSON BEFORE I WAS TURNED, BUT NOW IT’S THE FUCKING HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD. EVERYTHING IS SO CONFUSING NOW.  
BUT ITS FOR THE BEST I DIDN’T. I KNOW EVEN FOR ALL OF MY BLUFF AND BLUNDER ABOUT TAKING REVENGE—I’D REGRET IT. I’D ALWAYS REGRET IT.  
AND MY DAD WOULD BE SO DISAPPOINTED IN ME. I COULD NEVER LET HIM DOWN LIKE THAT AND NOT HATE MYSELF AFTERWARDS, EVEN IF I KNEW HE WOULD FORGIVE ME.  
SO THAT’S ABOUT WHERE I AM IN LIFE RIGHT NOW. ANGRY, CONFUSED, BUT RELIEVED. IT’S A BIT WEIRD TO CONSIDER MYSELF FREE OF THE WOLF WHO HAS HAUNTED ME FOR SO LONG, BUT AT THE SAME TIME IT’S A FRESH START, A CHANCE TO LIVE MY LIFE FREE FROM THE FEAR OF HIM.  
AND LOOK AT ME, RANTING PHILOSOPHICALLY AT YOU ABOUT MYSELF LIKE SOME DICKWAD THAT’D MAKE NARCISSUS LOOK LIKE A FUCKING SAINT. I CAN’T BELIEVE THE POPE HIMSELF DIDN’T MATERIALIZE IN MY BEDROOM JUST THEN TO SHUT ME UP, SUMMONED BY THE SIN OF MY UTTER SELFISHNESS. DEAR JESUS I EVEN TALKED ABOUT HOW IT FELT BEING FREE OF THE GUY MURDEROUSLY STALKING ME WITHOUT EVEN TAKING INTO ACCOUNT HOW THAT MUST BE FOR YOU WITH BRO STILL PUT THERE.  
SHIT.  
I’M SORRY.  
HOW ARE YOU DOING, DAVE? 

Dave stared at the words for a second that lasted too long. He didn’t know how to answer so he deflected to question with one of his own. 

its not selfish to be grateful that noir is behind bars at last but  
do  
do you think i did a good thing?  
YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO BE MORE SPECIFIC. TO ME, YOU’VE DONE A LOT OF GOOD THINGS. 

The complement should have made him feel giddy, but now he just felt nauseous again. Karkat’s praise was unearned. 

There was something eating away at the core of his being, a corruptive form of doubt that he couldn’t think his way out of. It was like hitting a wall in his mind, so he set out to try and explain his dilemma except that starting the thought was like throwing open the flood gates. Everything came pouring out of him. 

letting noir live  
not the part about stopping you from killing him, thats not whats tearing me up inside  
i get that part completely. noirs obsessive vengeance vendetta against you for daring to survive the first time, and the second time too. the string of bodies he left behind him… i get all of that. i understand exactly why he did what he did  
and i thought i was so sure of my own choice as well, about letting him live but  
did i chose wrongly when i let him live? knowing now that because of my so called mercy, a man is dead  
and if id manned up and ended that motherfucker like he deserved that guy would still be alive  
its my fault hes dead  
did i do the right thing? does good always equal right? i know most people would classify letting noir live as a good thing, but was it right? im not arguing that noir didnt deserve to be killed, but was it wrong of me to let him live? to make that choice? how could it have been the right decision when it cost an innocent man his life?  
why is everything so goddamn confusing? why cant i make good decisions without someone else paying the price?  
and i know you dont deserve to listen to my bullshit like this and for that im fucking sorry karkat, im so fucking sorry  
i know ill get over this fit by tomorrow and go back to being an emotionless asshole who just has to live knowing that many many people are dead because of me like whats one more fucking body to a list as long as mine is but i thought…  
i thought that away from bro and without him murdering people in my place that id stop collecting corpses but hey i guess not because when has the world ever shown me a single lick of goodness and seems content to shit on me at every given opportunity and oh my god i think im having a mental breakdown like rn  
for serious  
im freaking out  
DAVE? DAVE, CALM DOWN. BREATHE.  
IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY.

Dave set his phone down on his chest, briefly hiding the screen from sight. Karkat was just so sure of the future. Dave could never have said those words and meant them. To him, the future was a great hungry thing out to get him, the shadow of the unknown, of the yet to come, always a half-step out of reach. He still didn’t know if there was a future out there for him. It seemed unlikely as long as Bro existed. But where did that leave Karkat?

A loud peal of sound broke him from his musing, his phone giving a shake in his hand, the screen flashing. 

A phone call.

From Karkat.

Dave painfully turned back to his phone, his finger hovering over the call button. Karkat had never called him before. What did this mean?

He hesitantly accepted the call and put the flip phone to his ear. He heard the gentle noise of Karkat breathing.

Dave cleared this throat. “I thought phone calls were for emergencies only?”

Karkat scoffed at the lame attempt at deflection, his voice low. “I think that this qualifies as an emergency.”

“Does it?” Dave answered evasively, fingers tightening in his bedsheets. “I didn’t mean to get you caught up in my bullshit.”

“It’s not,” Karkat tried to argue. “It’s not bullshit. Not when it’s from you.”

Dave’s throat tightened painfully at the words, forming a lump he had to swallow past. It was dark and quiet in his room. The only light came from his phone screen. No moonlight showed from outside, the time bomb of Karkat’s upcoming transformation hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. 

“What started this?” Karkat asked softly, his voice a murmur. “You seemed fine after the attack itself, more so than I think it was right to be.” A small laugh, quiet and unamused. “You were stoic and unflappable. You acted like none of the horror could touch you and I envied that. What changed?”

Dave stared at the ceiling. “I got a man killed.”

Karkat sighed. “No, you didn’t. Noir did that. It had nothing to do with you.”

“Noir was still alive because of me,” Dave quickly countered. “That makes it my fault.”

“That makes it Noir’s fault because he’s a batshit insane murderer!” Karkat’s voice sharpened though it didn’t lose its quiet intensity. “You did the right thing—Don’t let him take that from you. That blood is on his hands, not yours.”

“That doesn’t mean that I did the right thing,” Dave argued right back, feeling desperate. “That guy is still dead.”

“And we can’t change that.” Karkat voice was tired, weary. “Look, Dave. We can’t change the past. We can’t undo what damage has been done. No amount of arguing about right or wrong or good deed or not is going to bring that man back to his family. All it’s going to do is make you feel more and more miserable about what happened, stuff that you could not have changed. You did the right thing. You saved my life, my Dad’s life, and you showed mercy to Jack Noir. What that lunatic did afterwards isn’t on you.” He sighed again, worn out. “I don’t want that man dead any more that you don’t, hell, I know he had fucking kids that are a little younger than us even, but what happened is done with. Do you think I wanted another werewolf to get shot dead in my driveway? But what else was there to do?” Karkat’s voice was shaky now, near tears. “The full moon is still six days away. That’s nine straight days spent as a wolf—that’s simply not survivable... Killing him might have been it’s own kind of mercy, not even attempting to factor in the danger to lives that he posed. Do you really think that I wouldn’t have done everything in my power to save him if I could? To stop some other unwillingly Turned wolf like me from becoming a killer?” Karkat ran out of air to rant with and sucked in a deep breath. “Sometimes there’s just no right answer. Sometimes all we can do is what we can.”

Dave wasn’t sure if he believed that. Not yet, at least. 

Karkat went on. “Sometimes bad things happen even if we tried to do the right thing. The good thing. But we can’t let that stop us from choosing to do the right thing again.”

“We can’t control the future, only our actions,” Dave interrupted, calming down. This part was old news to him, but the reminder still struck home. 

“Yeah,” Karkat agreed. “We can’t control what other people do. That’s why its up to us to make the difference. That’s why it’s up to us to choose our own destiny.”

“Fate, destiny,” Dave murmured, laying back and letting his eyes slip closed so that the only thing he knew was Karkat’s voice in his ear. “I never really believed in either.”

“Then what do you believe in?” Karkat asked, voice low and intent. 

“I believe that the world is neither good nor bad,” Dave stated. “But that’s not a good thing. I believe that the world makes it too easy for things to get bad, and that doing the good things takes so much more effort than going with the flow. I think this world makes it too easy to lose yourself, and once you step off that beaten path its an uphill battleground to claw your way upwards again. But worse than that,” Dave said, eyes still closed. “Is that I think this world does a pretty good job of tricking us into thinking that we have to fight this battle alone. “

Karkat was silent for a moment, then, “But you’re not alone anymore, are you, Dave?”

Dave thought about Slick, about Droog, Clubs, Boxcars. About Lalonde and her fierce joy of defending him. About red text on a computer screen. The feeling of Karkat’s hand in his. A million little things compounded together to form a picture that wasn’t bleak, that was full of color and bursting with life simply because of the other people in it.

“No,” Dave said. “I’m not alone.” Then he hung up the phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit slow, but important things are happening and i thought there'd be one last semi-slow chapter because after this its a straight grind to the end ;) 
> 
> Can you feel it? Are you ready? Am _I_ ready?
> 
> Honesty I'm not sure but I'm willing to find out.


	25. chapter twenty-five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEW CHAPTER ALERT!
> 
> CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED BECAUSE THIS IS ABOUT TO BE A WILD RIDE.

The weird part about waiting was that Dave always expected it to end. That he was waiting for a certain thing to come along and loudly announce that his time of waiting was over, but as he held his breath and waited as the next few days passed without his name sneaking its way into the headlines alongside Karkat’s, Dave began to think that maybe Slick had succeeded in rewriting a small portion of history. 

But the threat of some great looming future date still haunted him. Solving the mystery of Karkat’s serial killing stalker didn’t magically fix the problem of Dave’s own murderous shadow. If anything, the parallels between Noir and Bro just made Dave that much more aware of how fucked he was if Bro found him, because there was no way in hell that Dave would get away unscathed a second time. Not against Bro. He’d never been that lucky twice, and the thought was driven home when Slick sat him down at the kitchen table under Hal’s ever-present webcam and asked him point-blank exactly how Bro would act if he found out where Dave was. 

The question, asked with Slick’s patented brand of intense yet distant inquiry, made Dave feel nauseous. He still knew the answer though. it was a line of thought he’d spent weeks pondering.

“Why do you ask?” Dave turned the question around anyway, feeling anxious and sick. “Why? What happened?”

Slick didn’t even have the decency to look cagey about his reply. “Because this is the time, generally speaking, when someone up the chain of command fucks up and the assailant discovers where their mark is located.” Slick gave Dave a long, tense look. “And that statement goes double for you with all the recent press bullshit I’ve been fighting tooth-and-fucking-nail to keep covered up. Clubs is almost at his wits’ end over this.”

“Boo hoo,” Dave mocked, still stressed. “Your tech guy actually has to do his fucking job for once. Why should I care?” The unwarranted hostility was on brand for past Dave, but this line of questioning always made him relapse as a form of self-defense. 

To Slick’s benefit, he didn’t rise to the bait. The fed had been doing that more and more now, glimpsing insights into his character that made Dave uncomfortable. Damn him.

Dave pressed harder, determined to escape before he actually had to consider the consequences of Bro finding him. “Why don’t we talk about why Jack Noir looks like a fucking carbon copy of you?”

This time, Slick couldn’t hide all of his flinch. It was subtle, just a tightening of the shoulders, but it let Dave know he’d scored a hit. 

“Come on,” Dave wormed the question in deeper, both out of semi-hostility and genuine curiosity. “Like, what the fuck? He looks like he could be your brother for fuck’s sake. What’s the excuse for that?” It still bothered him, how easy it had been for Dave to stab a man that looked so much like his handler. Even now, when Dave looked at the grim, hard-boiled man before him and mentally added an extra eye and a shit ton of extra bloodthirst, the match was almost identical. Freaky. Noir even shared that dark, glassy shade of black in his eyes that Dave had only seen on Slick before. 

Slick sighed, and even Hal spoke up.

There is a close familial resemblance between the two of you. My facial recognition software is the best in the world and is not so easily fooled by similar-looking faces, but even I must admit that for the two of you to be strangers yet share such striking similarities is beyond coincidence.  
Is Jack Noir your family, Spades Slick?

It was a question Dave had been wondering about since the attack. 

Slick looked… disquieted. Uneasy. His fingertips drummed on the table top. “Honestly?” he asked, shrugging. “I’ve got no fucking clue. I’m a foster kid baby—was raised in the system. That’s most of the reason why a much stupider and younger version of me ran off to the mob at the first opportunity, and we all know how that shit show ended.” Slick lightly tapped his eyepatch to prove his point, then grimaced. “I’ve been looking into it actually. Noir’s past. He’s… he’s also a system kid. Same age as me even.” Slick grunted and looked away, speaking to the wall without looking at him, like he was ashamed. “I had Clubs and Diamonds run some samples for me. The results should be in as early as next week.”

Samples as in DNA?

Slick nodded slowly on a stiff neck, gnawing at his lip like he wished he had a cigar. 

Holy shit.  
I’d tell you what the exact odds for that are but the number is so astronomically miniscule that I don’t think that your mind could fully conceptualize exactly how impossible that is, so just know the odds are really, really small.  
Like cut an atom in half, throw it in a Sahara dust storm, and have a blind man point to where it lands once the dust settles. 

Slick nodded again, unsurprised.

Dave’s mind was doing weird things to him, running full-speed at possibilities that he didn’t want to think about. So instead he said the only thing it was safe to say. “You don’t seem too surprised that you might have a crazed werewolf for a brother.”

Slick shrugged, grinning wryly. “I always wondered if I had any siblings kicking it out there in the world,” he said, pondering his thoughts out loud, coughing roughly. “I reckon every abandoned kid does the same. But, after knowing you and getting introduced to the madness that continues to be my life now that I’m your legal guardian, having some secret criminal twin seems in the ball park of general insanity to me.” Slick’s grin grew wider. “Dave, you seem to solve mysteries even when you don’t know they exist.”

Dave scoffed, mock-offended as he argued. “I did not irreparably fuck up your life simply by proximity.”

“Ha!” Slick laughed and pointed to the computer on the counter. “And yet there Hal is, just one facet of the crazy case that life handed me when I first opened your file.”

Touché. Point duly noted.  
Even if Dave randomly getting to know Karkat who just so happened to be getting stalked by your maybe-twin brother seems a little far-fetched. 

Now it was Dave’s urn to laugh, grinning. “Iowa is just Like That,” he said simply. 

Even Slick looked amused, but it didn’t deter him from his original line of questioning. “What would Bro do to you if he won this battle of ours?”

The abrupt shift in tone put Dave immediately back on edge. “There’s got to be a reason why you’re asking me that now, and not just because of some bullshit theoretical timeline either.”

Slick deadpanned his answer, expressionless. “I keep having dreams about you,” he said. “Nightmares where Bro wins. I… I need to know how he’d act so I know how to counter him.”

Dave looked at Slick, really looked at him. His handler looked exhausted with stress, his eye slightly sunken in and dull. It looked like he hadn’t been sleeping since the Noir attack. He looked dreadful. 

Dave was shocked, taken back. “What… what kind of dreams?” He asked. 

Slick shrugged, listless. “Just one really,” He said, swallowing, still not looking at Dave. “I’m in my car. It’s night. I’m driving, no, I’m chasing someone. I’m alone in some strange city and I _know_ you’ve been missing for days. There’s… there’s a gray car ahead of me. I speed up until the engine nearly gives beneath me. The car doesn’t try to run away when I flash my lights on it. It pulls right over and I know how wrong that is, I _know_ I should wait for backup, but I never do.” Slick hesitated, gnawing over his words. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

Dave did not want to hear this, but knew that he should. He nodded wordlessly for Slick to continue. 

“The car stops,” Slick said slowly. “The driver’s not Strider, it’s some weedy-looking white guy all confused except that I can see right through the act. You’re not in the backseat. The car’s empty but the coordinates on my phone say I’m right on top of you. I even check the trunk but you’re not there. There’s nothing there but a black duffle bag. It’s clean cut, plain-looking, and I go to close the trunk when I see the blood between the teeth of the zipper.” He paused again, voice pained. “Everything goes weird, slow, gooey almost. Like I’m no longer in control of what I’m doing and I have to watch as my hands reach out and unzip the bag. I don’t want to look inside, but I do, and I always remember that joke you made once about a surprise amputation when you asked to remove your ankle tracker, and I hear those words again as I look inside the bag.” He stopped, swallowed thickly, then went on. “There’s nothing inside the bag except a naked foot and a bit of some leg, the bones exposed and shattered, clearly torn off in the worst possible way. There’s blood everywhere and the smell is terrible, and, and its your tracker attached to the limb. It’s your foot. It’s your leg. It’s _you_, Dave, and that one piece is all I ever find of you. You’re just… gone. Vanished.” Slick stopped to shrug a little, let out a broken chuckle. “And people are still disappearing in Texas. Sometimes Strider even leaves the police calling cards of his victims, but we never find him either. And… that’s it. That’s the end. That’s my fear, my dream. That’s my fear of how this ends if Strider gets to you, so tell me, Dave, please, because I don’t think I can bear experiencing this dream in real life. If I really have to run down some Uber driver to find your severed foot locked in the trunk I’m going to kill myself.” 

Slick spoke so matter-of-factly that it took a second for those final words to sink in, but when they did Dave shook his head. “No,” he said, rejecting it. “You can’t say that to me. I can’t matter that much to you.” Slick made to interrupt him but Dave didn’t stop talking. He was trying to use words to hide from the truth. “I can’t be the only person you’ve lost on the job.”

Slick looked insulted. “I’ve never lost a witness before,” he defended himself. “What kinda amateur do you take me for? And besides,” he said carelessly, like he didn’t care how much the words would hurt. “You haven’t been just a job in a long time, Dave.”

Dave blinked fiercely behind his shades. He still tried to defend himself. “I can’t be that different from the other bastards you’ve guarded.”

“Well, you _are_ a bastard,” Slick agreed, laughing. “And a little shit, but you’re also an innocent kid with the biggest heart I’ve ever seen, even if trauma has made you timid about who you show it to.”

Dave kept quiet, breathing hard. “Do you really want to know?” He asked. “About Bro?” He still couldn’t bring himself to say what he really wanted, but this compromise was as close to opening up as he could touch. 

Slick nodded, face hard. 

“Hal?” Dave called out, struggling to focus. “Correct me if I say something wrong, okay?”

Will do.

“If Bro finds me,” Dave started, picturing it in his mind. “By the time he makes his move he’ll have already been watching me for weeks. He’ll have my schedule and yours down pat, and he’ll choose the exact perfect time to strike. He won’t do it somewhere public like the school or bus—way too messy for him. Too many people, too many variables. He likes to be in complete control, so it’ll probably be a simple snatch and grab, in-and-out. He can do the torturing to death thing later in a secondary location of his choosing, somewhere where he can take his time.” Dave gave the fed a dark grin. “Ironically, the severed foot thing is totally something he would do. That macabre shit is right up his alley and a massive fuck you to the cops.”

“But where?” Slick asked, agitated. “I keep having the Crew run the data but I can’t pin a singular location down.”

Dave shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “It’ll somewhere I’m alone, or with a minimal security detail. The less people the better.”

Slick didn’t look satisfied. If anything, he just looked more worried.

You two are both missing the point.  
There is one location that stands head and shoulders above other likely targets, one where Dave himself might even be alone with no protection.

Slick’s head snapped around to stare at the red words. “Where?”

Here.  
The safe house.  
You seem to think that its location alone provides enough passive protection to keep Dave safe, as if a few motion sensitive cameras and thermal imaging traps could stop Bro Strider, the man who wired the top three floors of his apartment building to blow via an app on his phone that could be triggered remotely.  
And that’s not even the worst of the traps he had in place. The man all but reinvented booby trapping locations and guarding things from afar.  
But if Bro comes for Dave, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s because he gained access to information regarding Dave’s whereabouts, including the safe house. Just him being in the house won’t keep him safe, and you, Slick, are known to leave him alone for hours at a time here.  
That’s when Bro will strike. Right here, when Dave’s alone, so that you can get that text message about Dave’s location being broadcast from the trunk of a random red herring car paid in cash to drive for as long as they can until the cops find them.  
Or Karkat’s house, I guess. If Bro’s been watching Dave, it’s safe to assume he also knows about Karkat, though he might not want to go up against a werewolf, especially with recent news stations singing his praise for taking down Noir. Mr. Vantas’ presence in the house would be a non-issue. He’s collateral. And if that’s where Bro choses to strike, Karkat will probably be collateral as well.  
Bro wouldn’t be foolish enough to try for hand-to-hand against a wolf, and I’m 100% certain that he’d be packing silver.

Slick frowned, scratching roughly at the stubble on his chin. “So we go for more protection in both places,” he began, forming the plan as he spoke. “And I make sure there’s always someone watching you.”

I could be of help with this. With my assistance there’s no possibility that Bro would sneak in unnoticed, and that’s if he makes his move before I find him. Which is highly unlikely. 

Hal and Slick continued to bounce ideas off of each other, but Dave’s mind was occupied with fears of Bro finding him when Karkat was around. Just the notion of that possibility filled him with dread. 

Hal and Slick had devolved into arguing with each other again. They could never really agree for long before they began butting heads, each one just a little too confrontational to back down. 

All I’m saying is that freeing me right now would immediately solve a minimum of 83% of your problems, and it’s only bullshit that neither of us believes in that’s stopping you. Red tape at best and conspiracy at worst. 

“The board will make its decision by the end of the month,” Slick reminded him, not giving in, unmovable object versus unstoppable force. “That’s only nine days away. You can wait that long.”

And if this mysterious ‘board’ you gave all of my legal rights to personhood to decides that I’m not to be counted as a sentient being?  
I don’t want to stay trapped in this computer forever. 

This question Dave could answer. “Then I say fuck them and free you anyway.”

“Dave,” Slick warned. “Lesson one of getting away with crime—Don’t fucking tell a federal agent that you intend to do the crime.”

Dave just shrugged, all sardonic insolence. He felt jittery, on-edge. The nervous tension he’d slowly learned to ignore was back full-force by just the mention of Bro. His shoulder ached. “That’s all I know,” he said. “That’s all I know about what Bro would do.” It was mostly true. Dave had a few ideas he wasn’t sure were realistic, but then Bro could get creative and inventive with his methods. The idea made Dave sick. 

“If he found you,” Slick asked, one eyebrow raised. 

“Yeah,” Dave said readily. His fingertips tapped the tabletop, a senseless rhythm. 

“If, not when,” Slick clarified. 

Dave stayed silent, caught. 

Slick chuckled. It wasn’t a happy sound. “Ya know,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I remember when you’d only refer to Bro as an inevitability. A constant. When did you start believing in the future, Dave?”

Dave’s fingers fell still, and when he answered, it was true. “I guess when I had people like you start believing in me.”

…

Dave spent the next few days suffocating under the Crew’s constant vigilance. A second police officer joined Johnson in the front office and the school bus had a tail. Dave was uneasy with it all but he didn’t go so far as to think that he was being lied to. If there was a reason for Slick’s sudden increased paranoia, the fed didn’t tell him. The whole dream spiel was a thrown bone, not the whole story. 

The sun shone in through the bus window, the bench seat bouncing beneath him as the bus hit a pothole. Karkat was beside him, knee bouncing nervously, head bobbing to a beat only he could hear from the headphones in his ears. When the bus swayed into another broken chunk of pavement and the shift in force made Karkat drift into Dave’s side, he didn’t move away and laced his arm around Karkat’s shoulders. 

Karkat tilted towards him and smiled, and he tugged one earbud free and offered it to Dave. He didn’t say anything, and Dave reached out and accepted the offering. The gentle buzz of the music filled his ear, and the sunlight was warm against his skin. Karkat’s head drifted down onto his shoulder. 

It was the last week of school. Summer was so close, its intangible impossibilities a fingertip away.

They didn’t speak. This moment didn’t need words, and Dave wished that he could have a million more moment like this. Warm. Safe. These moments when he felt alive in the quiet way, the peaceful realization that life could be like this forever, that he could own his happiness. That maybe he’d earned it.

Behind them, a dark car shadowed the bus.

…

Dave exited the bus at the board office with Karkat. That wasn’t the plan for today; he was supposed to go straight back to the safe house like usual, but he thought that the best thing he could do was avoid falling into a rut. Shake things up a little. Step away from his schedule. 

Droog gave him a disapproving glare as he passed in the tail car, the engine revving, but he didn’t pull over and let Dave enter the building with Karkat.

The county school board office was familiar and welcoming. Dave knew each slowly wilting leaf of the sad houseplant in the corner. The off-white walls held no secrets. The receptionist greeted him warmly and even used his real name. 

“Dave,” She called out cheerfully. “And Karkat too! What a welcome surprise.” She shuffled some papers at her desk and winked at them. “I’ll let your father know you’re here.” 

“Thanks,” Karkat said, flopping over into a chair along the wall. If he’d noticed the car tailing the bus, he didn’t mention it. 

Dave sat beside him. He wouldn’t have long to talk before Mr. Vantas appeared, fresh out of the hospital on bedrest that he so helpfully ignored, or Slick barged in spitting rage that wouldn’t cover up his worry. 

“What are your plans for the summer?” Dave asked curiously. With the full moon at the end of the week, Karkat would start his summer locked in his basement.

But instead of answering with some bullshit about relaxing or partying down at the local river, Karkat’s red eyes were keen. He straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “About summer. That’s months’ worth of time off school that I could spent locked at home, pleasant though I know that’ll be with you around,” he nudged Dave in the side with his elbow, a grin ghosting his lips. But he grew serious again. “Or… I thought I could go hunting.”

Dave tilted his head to the side, studying Karkat. “Hunting?”

“For other wolves,” Karkat clarified. “I might be the country’s only known werewolf, or, first known werewolf now that Jack Noir’s caught, but Noir’s recently Turned, within the last five or so years. I know there’s others like me out there, maybe a lot, hidden maybe, scattered for sure, but they’re out there.” His face was open, earnest. “I was thinking about trying to find them.”

“How?” Dave asked carefully. “If there’s more than one single lone wolf out there, they’re so well hidden that not even the FBI can track them down.”

Karkat shrugged, uncertain but determined. “I… I don’t know,” he admitted, fingers clenched. “But I want to try.”

Dave was thinking hard. “I think I know where to start,” he began, leaning closer. 

Karkat mirrored him, leaning in close enough that their breath mingled. “How?” He breathed out the question, lips only a fraction of an inch away. His red eyes were steady, a challenge hidden in them. 

“Oh, you know,” Dave teased, voice light. “I know a guy.”

“Who?” Karkat asked, but he was in on the game now.

“An AI named Hal Strider,” Dave answered, still grinning. “I bet if you asked him nicely, he’d help you out with that little hunt of yours.”

Karkat’s fingers caught at the edge of his wrists, tracing over the skin there before lacing their fingers together. The hard plastic chair he was in wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but Dave couldn’t be fucked to move. Right here was where he was happy, here with Karkat’s fingers held in his. 

He leaned in for just a quick peck, a fast press of the lips, but it was so good that Dave had to go back for seconds. And Karkat didn’t complain at the chaste kiss, fingers squeezing his until Mr. Vantas loudly cleared his throat and they sprang away like startled sheep. 

Karkat’s face was red with embarrassment and just a little bit of defiance as he stared at his father, who simply sighed and crossed his arms. Dave was unrepentant. Nothing could make him regret falling in love with Karkat Vantas, not even single dads who thought PDA was a disease. 

“What?” Karkat asked with mock innocence. 

Mr. Vantas just sighed again and turned to face Dave. “Dave,” he said, foot tapping. “I believe that your guardian is outside.”

There was a short, impatient horn blast from the parking lot as if Slick had heard him, the bastard. 

“Alright then,” Dave said, standing to stretch out his back and shoulders. He shot Karkat a wink. “I’ll text you later.”

“You’d fucking better,” Karkat answered. A smile still hovered around his lips, wanting to break through like the blisteringly red sunset would be through the clouds in a few hours. There was mischief in his eyes. 

Dave couldn’t help but laugh a little as he turned away, his heart light in his chest. 

The front door to the office slammed behind him, Slick’s familiar car snarling in the parking lot. The fed made sure to roll the window down just to scowl at him. Dave flicked him off in return, smirking.

He made his way to the car and pulled open the door. “You should be thanking me,” Dave said, already building his defense. “I thought we were trying to be unpredictable?”

“Attempting to throw your tail is not being ‘unpredictable’” Slick said, pissed but in the way that he normally was over small inconveniences. “It’s called being troublesome.”

“Did I ever tell you that troublesome is my middle name?” Dave asked, voice bleeding with sarcasm. The engine growled beneath him as the car sped out of the lot, and while Slick didn’t forget that he was pissed off, he forgave Dave enough to share a shit-eating grin.

“What?” Dave asked curiously, instantly attentive. 

“The SWAT team for Strider’s ‘associates’ nabbed another scumbag today,” Slick told him, voice smug. “That’s one less asshole on the dark web buying blood with cash wired from overseas bank accounts.”

“Just one?” Dave questioned, disheartened. All in all, that still wasn’t much. Hal had given them over fifty names. Two plus Caliborn were drops in the bucket. 

“Hey, its progress,” Slick reminded him. “And the problem is most of the guys Hal told us about live outside the country. It’s a legal nightmare even deciding who’s jurisdiction it is, especially with trying to keep you out of court for these dickwad lawyers to throw questions at.”

Dave breathed in through his nose, then let it out. “Thanks for telling me.”

“NO problem,” Slick celebrated. “Every guy we arrest is one less tormentor loose in the world. Even now, you’re doing so much good, Dave.”

Dave stared out the window. “How?”

“Do you think you were these guy’s only victim?” Slick asked him. “Fuckers like Caliborn, like guys who pay to watch things like what happened to you… they’re monsters. And monsters always prey on vulnerable people.” Slick grumbled like he knew enough about the subject to sicken him, and turned down the unmarked dirt road that led past a field of decaying trailers with trees growing up through them, past the bend in the road that led to the safe house. 

The gravel lot was empty, the rest of the Crew elsewhere for the evening. 

“Start thinking about dinner,” Slick warned him as he cut the engine off. “Or its hotdogs and chips again and Droog will murder me for not feeding you better.”

“Ha,” Dave huffed out a laugh and snapped himself free of the seat belt. “What’s wrong with hotdogs and chips?”

“Everything,” Slick grumbled to himself, but he was smiling again.

Everything was completely fine until after Dave walked in through the front door behind Slick. The house was quiet and empty, but the hairs on Dave’s arms rose like he felt a gust of freezing air. He paused in the doorway, knees locking.

Slick noticed. “What?”

Dave said nothing and the house was silent for a moment. He couldn’t say why, but something felt… off. “It’s nothing,” Dave said, and he stepped into the living room. The feeling didn’t evaporate as he made his way through the house to his bedroom, feet sluggish on the ageing hardwood. Slick watched him go, unmoving. 

Dave ducked down the hallway and couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were checking the shadows, counting the angles of the walls, falling hard back into his old patterns. He pushed open the door to his bedroom and stood there for a second. The room was empty. He didn’t go inside. He didn’t dare to. Something was wrong here—something was very, very wrong, but he didn’t know what it was until he caught sight of his slightly-ajar closet door, a door that he was completely certain that he’d shut this morning before school. 

Ice water filled his veins and he was moving before his brain had fully realized what was wrong, almost falling backwards in his haste to escape his small, suddenly unsafe bedroom. There was danger here. 

“Slick!” Dave yelled, panicked, as he tore down the short hallway, fingers locked over the panic button strapped to his wrist and slamming down on it. 

The sound of gunshots answered him, four rapid, fast-paced thunderous explosions that rang in his ears for far too long, then the sound of breaking glass, the sharp shatter followed by the sound of the glass scattering across the floor and crunching under feet.

For a second, Dave was confused. The sound came from in front of him, from the kitchen, not from behind him, and there was no sound of heavily pursuing footsteps after Dave.

The dreadful realization hit him like a bolt of lightning. 

Someone was in the house. And they’d gone after Spades Slick first. 

Bro never used guns. A hitman then? Slick himself, opening fire from the gun he habitually wore even inside the house? 

Dave skidded to a halt in the kitchen. “Slick?” He called out, still panicked. There was the distant sound of an alarm wailing from the fed’s bedroom, a response to the panic button but fat lot of good that did for Dave right now, with a killer in the house. 

But loose killer or not, Dave couldn’t let Slick handle this on his own. He stepped forward, into the small, cramped kitchen. Flashing red light caught his eye from the laptop on the table. 

DAVE!  
DAVE, RUN FUCKING RUN!  
HE FOUND US—HE’S HERE JUST FUCKING RUN!!!!!!!!!

There was a loud crash, footsteps, the sound of a vicious struggle, and two figures hauled themselves into view from out of the side study. Slick’s face was tight with pain and menace, teeth bared in a snarl as he fought to prove how bad of an idea ambushing him was. He’d already dropped the spent gun and was wrestling for control, both hands locked around one thick wrist, vying to keep off a sword’s long blade.

Dave felt his muscles seize up from the sight of those familiar broad shoulders, the veined arms and close-cropped hair. It still didn’t fully sink in until their struggle made the attacker shift just enough for Dave to see his face.

Bro, his expressionless face set in grim determination. He was dressed in all black, the bulk of a bullet-proof vest disguising where he’d taken four shots to center mass, but Dave could tell from watching him that Bro was guarding his core. Slick never missed, after all, and those bullets left bruises like apples even if they didn’t snap ribs. 

Watching the brief battle was awful beyond words. Both fighters were trying to kill the other and they were both highly skilled, but it was quickly becoming a one-sided match. Slick was furious and desperate, and for all of his training he’d never gone up against blades like Bro’s before. And Bro was cold and unrelenting, and now Slick was on the defensive, his footwork sloppy, and there were only a few seconds for Dave to respond before Bro won this fight. 

He should have tried to fight, but Dave’s limbs were locked in place.

“Fuck.” The word came out a half-strangled whisper, but Bro heard him all the same. 

“Little bitch, wassup?” Bro greeted him, surging forward, and for all of Slick’s skill, he couldn’t stop Bro’s attack. Fists didn’t fare well against swords, and Bro drove the point of his katana entirely through the meat of Slick’s shoulder, out through the other side and into the wood behind him, staking the fed in place with a spurt of blood. “I’ll deal with you later.” The words were all threat, a grim promise as Bro turned to face Dave 

Slick made an enraged, choked sound of pain, his hand clamped around where the sword entered him. He was done for, the fed had lost, but he still had one last command to issue. “Dave, run! Go! Leave me!”

Dave ignored the order, standing there, watching as Bro drew a second sword from where he had an extra two katanas strapped anime-style across his back. 

This was it. This was the collision, the inevitable instant he’d failed at running from so absolutely that looking back made his every effort seem ridiculous. This was when he died. This was fate. This was how his life ended. 

“It fucking took you long enough,” Dave accused, forcing his numb tongue to speak past the lump in his throat. 

“You think you’re a sneaky bastard, don’t you?” Bro shot right back. “Living out here in some fucking shack, thinking you’d gotten away.” He settled himself into a lower stance, assuming an offensive position Dave recognized from a thousand different ass kickings. “You’re fucking pathetic, Dave. Always have been.”

“Dave—run!” Slick was still trying to free himself, but the sword was in him good and it couldn’t be fucked to budge an inch. There was more blood than should have been possible around his hands from where he’d already slit his palms trying to slide the sword free. “GO—just GO!”

Dave didn’t move, didn’t run. He wasn’t about to die from a blade through his back. If this was it, he wanted to watch death as it happened. He wasn’t a coward—he wasn’t running. He wasn’t leaving Slick alone to die. 

Dave felt his face fall into an impassive, calculated cruelty as he studied the man who was more monster than human being. 

“You’re not running?” Bro asked, one eyebrow raised, sword held at the ready.

“Naw,” Dave shrugged. He was very careful not to so much as glance at Slick. “You should know me better than that. I’ll be a pain in your ass till the end, motherfucker.”

Bro looked surprised, in a pleased, proud way, like Dave had passed some test. He gave a sharp nod and unsheathed the other katana on his back and tossed it at Dave in a vicious throw.

He didn’t try to dodge, and the blade’s hilt smacked into his open palm on reflex. Dave held the kanata up instinctively, feet falling into the defensive. Likewise, he raised one eyebrow at Bro. “You going soft or some shit? What’s with the sword? Why not smear my ass into the floor unarmed?”

Bro gave a mirroring shrug. “Strider men deserve to die on their feet, blade in hand,” Bro said. “And I’ve already killed Dirk like this, so why not make it two for two?” Bro smiled for the first time, and it was a joyless cruelty. “He wasn’t man enough to beat me, and you aren’t either.”

“Huh,” Dave pointed his blade directly at Bro, steeling himself. “Then en guarde, motherfucker.”

Dave didn’t have time to ponder how batshit insane this was. He struck with all the strength he had when Bro came for him and it wasn’t enough. Bro was too strong, but Dave was fast. He reoriented, shifted his weight, and swung again. The sound of steel-on-steel pealed forth like fingers on a chalkboard. It wasn’t like in the movies, when the swordplay sounded like music. This was the hammering of a crowbar on an anvil, the ugly crash of metal. He managed to parry the first hit, then the second, but by the third he knew he was outclassed. Bro didn’t waste time with toying with him, he didn’t like to play with his victims, he simply scored a hit along Dave’s arm that made his teeth clench at the bright burst of pain, and after first blood Bro got another set of hits one after the other. Dave couldn’t fend him off, and Slick was still yelling at him to run. 

But he couldn’t. This was one problem he couldn’t avoid. He had to face Bro head-on. He had to look his abuser in the eyes as he died as one final fuck you. And besides, he was done waiting.

Dave was breathing hard, his arms shaking from the wasted effort of defending himself and his own terror. This wasn’t like before when Karkat was attacked. Then Dave had been assured of the outcome. He hadn’t been afraid past his fears for the nearly indestructible werewolf.

Now he was terrified out of his mind, Slick’s screams ringing in his ears, certain he was going to die as he traded blows with a madman genius in sword skill who could outfight an army. 

He traded blows, each one getting faster, more risky. The laptop on the table was shrieking at him, lights flashing in panic and fear as Hal watched everything with helpless rage and grief. 

Dave, Dave, I love you. Fight him. Fight this. Don’t let him kill you please please Dave please. 

Bro saw the words too and a scowl crossed his face. He shoved Dave away long enough to drive his sword through the screen of the laptop with wanton destruction. The glass shattered, lights fading out before Bro swept the computer onto the floor and proceeded to stomp on it, the metal twisting, bolts snapping. 

“No!” Dave screamed, lunging forward. “Leave him alone!”

In his moment of absolute fear, Dave found the strength to fight against his fate. For Hal. For Slick. For Karkat. And for himself as well. 

Dave summoned all of the anger, pain, fear, and desperation he could muster and lunged for his former guardian. 

Bro was waiting for him. 

Then Bro scored the first major hit along Dave’s ribs, and before Dave could recover or recoil Bro drove the blade home, the end of his blade dipping inches into Dave’s rib cage. Blood sheeted across his shirt, dripping onto the floor, but it wasn’t enough to drop him. Neither was the pain of the stab. It hardened Dave, made him that much more aware of how one misstep could end it. 

And Dave was determined to win, or at least not go down alone. 

Bro ended the dance a few seconds later with another hit to Dave’s ribs, this one a certainly fatal stab to the chest as the air leaked out of him in a wheeze. The pain of it was blinding, and a half-second later the sword fell from his nerveless fingers. Someone was screaming as Dave looked down and saw the blade puncturing his chest. He was fucked. 

The katana hit the ground and Bro punched Dave in the face hard enough that his shades broke and he felt his brain rattle around his skull. He hit the floor a second later only to receive a kick to his already busted chest, then another to his kidney. The pain was indescribable. He couldn’t think past it. Dave’s eyes flickered upward, taking Bro’s face in as he stood over him and raised his sword one last time.

“Bye bye, lil’ bitch,” Bro mocked, but then Slick was free, his shoulder a mess of blood, rushing headlong into Bro’s side hard enough to make him stumble. Slick was maddened by anger and rage but unarmed, his desperation to save Dave not enough to win.

But it made Bro turn, abandoning Dave on the floor to finish bleeding out.

“You stubborn old man,” Bro snarled, shoving Slick away from himself. He brought his sword around dangerously, aiming for the heart. “Die a fool, then. See if I care.”

Slick braced himself for the killing hit, and Dave slowly reached out. His blood-slick palm touched the familiar shape of the hilt against his skin, the metal hot as he wrapped his fingers around it. He was a goner, but Slick? 

Slick was not allowed to die. One of them had to survive this. One of them had to stop Bro. 

Bro’s back was momentarily turned, about to run the federal marshal through for the last time, when Dave stood. He wasn’t sure how, but he stood. Planted his feet beneath him and rose up to his full height, sword in hand. 

He didn’t bother with a fancy strike. There wasn’t time and already the strength was pouring out of him. His arm shook with barely the strength it took to hold up the blade, but with Slick’s life on the line what choice did he have? In this instant mercy was a luxury he couldn’t fucking afford, and it’s not like he was going to last long enough to deal with the consequences anyway, so he hacked crudely at the side of Bro’s neck, the only part of his body not covered with Kevlar, using his sword as an axe. 

The sword was sharp as a medical scalpel, just the way Bro liked, and the quickness of the cut surprised Dave. The effortless way the metal parted the skin, then deeper. To the bone. 

Dave wasn’t strong enough even at his best to get all the way through in one hit, but even now enough blood pumped out of the wound to let Dave know he’d done exactly enough damage. He’d seen enough of Bro’s videos of slit throats to know what to look for, and the way the blood spurted when the sword dropped away let him know everything he needed to.

Bro whipped around, eyes wide. His mouth opened and blood came out. 

Dave laughed weakly, also tasting blood, and he fell again a second after Bro, both choking on their own blood. “Got you too, fucker,” Dave spat out. “That was for my brother.”

Bro said something that Dave couldn’t make out, and then Slick was strangling the man to death, the cord from Hal’s ruined webcam a tight vice around Bro’s cut throat. Dave looked away. 

He stared at the ceiling, focused on breathing in and out. Each breath got harder and harder. His chest bubbled with all the air that was leaking out of him. 

Slick’s face hovered over him, flecked with red, eye wide with panic. “Dave, Dave! Dave, hold on. Don’t move. I’ve got you.” He reached down, pulled Dave into his lap and Dave didn’t fight it. He wasn’t stupid; they both knew how this would end. 

Dave’s numb hand dug at his pocket, feverishly hunting for his phone. He managed to pull it out but fumbled it, fingers bloody. “Call…” He coughed out, voice wrecked.

“It’s okay,” Slick told him, swearing it. “You’ll be okay. Help is on the way.”

“No,” Dave argued, stubborn till the end. “Call… Karkat.”

Slick shook his head, his hands trying, futile, to stem the bleeding from Dave’s chest. 

Dave’s fingers located his phone and flipped it open. He hit the call button from memory. He couldn’t feel the sunlight on his face from the window. He couldn’t feel much of anything anymore. Breathing was the hardest thing in the entire world, but he had to hold on.

Karkat answered right away, slightly wary. “Dave?” he asked, concerned. “Everything alright? Are you okay? I thought calls were for emergencies only?”

“Cut… cut that off,” Slick admonished him, his voice thick with tears. There was a siren in the distance, police, ambulance, who knew? Both probably, lured in by the panic button’s cry. “He don’t need to hear this.”

“Dave?” Karkat asked, voice sharpening. “Dave? What’s wrong?”

Dave coughed, sputtering weakly. His lungs seized with a tight spasm. He almost couldn’t form the warped words. “Karkat… I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry.” There were tears in his own eyes. He didn’t want to die._ He didn’t want to die._

Beside him Bro lay still and unmoving. Was it worth it?

Karkat had caught on to the situation very fast, and now he was shouting too. “Dave? Dave! No. No, no, no no no, you can’t do this to me.”

“Kid, Dave,” Slick said, low and gruff, completely ignoring Karkat’s panicked voice. “Hold on, do you hear me? Hold on. Don’t die, don’t you fucking die on me.”

“I love you,” Dave said it again, because it was important, he needed Karkat to know this, though he meant the words for Slick as well. The words came out a choked whisper. 

The door crashed in, boots thundering across the wood floors he’d come to know so well as SWAT stormed the grounds. Dave ignored them. It was getting harder to focus on things. Didn’t people always say bleeding out was like going to sleep? He couldn’t keep his eyes open. 

“Dave, Dave stay with me. Keep talking to me.” Karkat’s voice was steel, an order, but he was crying too. Dave could hear it in his voice. 

“I can’t,” Dave breathed out, listening to both of the people he cared about most sobbing over him, and things began to drift away.

When the men dressed in white and yellow tried to move him, to life him up onto a gurney, everything finally whited out.

And Dave knew no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you kill me for the cliffhanger, I might have been writing a tragedy this entire time but I swear it'll have a happy ending. Not some bittersweet thing either-- the happy ending that everyone deserves. I didn't forget a tag. Things can get better in fiction ;) 
> 
> *flips table*


	26. chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay its new chapter time!!!!!

Consciousness flowed like water through Dave’s fingers. It was cool and soothing to float in the nothingness here. He remembered how thick and heavy his head felt, the sound of something beeping, and then darkness pressed in on him again, drawing him safely away from the bright pain of awareness. 

Time passed. He didn’t feel it. He didn’t know how much, but time did pass. This time he struggled back into his own body long enough for the pain to hit him, and then immediately retreated back down into the fuzz of sleep. 

He didn’t dream. But there was still something on the very edge of his semi-awareness, a dull, unfocused panic that there was something else he should be worrying about right now. Someone maybe? The face he saw in his mind was blurred, so maybe he was dreaming after all. 

Dave slept deeply, unbothered by pain except for the times he tried to prematurely awake. But he was never one to let a little pain stop him, and the clearer his head became, the more certain he was that he should wake the fuck up. 

That’s when the panic struck him. His chest was suddenly burning, his injured lungs heaving. There was something hard caught in his throat. He tried to bite through it and it tasted blank and smooth, like plastic. Someone yelled, and then he was asleep again. 

Each time he clawed at his awareness things grew sharper, clearer. He caught snippets of conversation that didn’t make sense, environmental noises that let him think _hospital_ with some degree of certainty, something scratchy taped across his eyes and connected to the tube down his throat. He couldn’t move his hands. There were straps across his wrists. 

Being caught should have made him scared, but the drugs kept his panic smothered. He remembered enough about himself to guess at why he was here, and as he pondered things he could have done to wind up in the ICU, the memories started to return.

How heavy his head felt cradled in Slick’s lap. The fed’s tear-streaked face above him, ordering him not to die. The smooth slickness of blood between his fingers. How his ragged breath had sounded leaking from his punctured lung.

And yet… he was not dead???

The realization was the final push to stir him back to consciousness. He had to fight for it, but Dave was used to fighting, and this time when he surged back to awareness it stuck on him for long enough for him to grunt, still gnawing at the trachea tube, yanking at his bound wrists. He couldn’t open his eyes, and a fresh wave of fear hit him. 

“He’s waking up!” An unfamiliar voice yelled. “Sedate him!”

Dave grunted again, really chomping at the hard plastic in his mouth that he couldn’t speak around. He was still blind, and getting angry fast as his fight or flight response kicked into high gear. He snatched hard at his wrists again, feeling the soft edge of leather and Velcro dig into his skin. 

“No!” This time the voice was heart-wrenchingly familiar. “Don’t you put that stuff in him again—let him try to wake up.”

“Mam, he’s still intubated. We can’t risk him panicking. He could hurt himself worse.” The unidentified nurse/doctor replied. 

“Let him wake,” Lalonde ordered, fingernails taping on something hard. “He needs to know what it is he’s done.”

Dave knew that this wasn’t a conversation that he wanted to have, not with her, so he gave up and let sleep claim him again. Even unconscious, he could still avoid the head bitch in charge for just a little while longer. She was probably pissed at him anyway for nearly getting himself killed.

This time, sleep was a relief 

..

He tried again.

“Mr. Slick,” A nurse cautioned, and Dave’s interest in waking rose more.

Slick swallowed loudly enough that Dave could hear it over the mountain of beeping and the earthquake of his own heartbeat in his ears. When he answered, he sounded weary. “Don’t knock him out again, please. Just let me talk him through it… that’ll keep him calm.”

Dave groaned, confused, and writhed in discomfort until the reflexive backlash of pain made him cry out. His entire body felt broken into mush then hastily patchworked back together again. But at least he couldn’t hear Lalonde’s voice this time. 

“Sir,” the medical worker said again, voice a thinly-veiled warning. “He will do damage to himself.”

“He’s got to wake up some time,” Slick argued. “And waiting isn’t going to make things better.” 

A hand gently touched the side of Dave’s face and he snatched his head away, still panicking. The hand didn’t try to touch him again.

“Hold still,” Slick ordered him, gruff but gentle. “I’m trying to help you, dumbass.”

Oddly enough, the insult is what made Dave calm down. If Slick felt comfortable enough to insult him, then the danger must have passed. That meant…

Dave still couldn’t speak and yet the question burned in his throat. 

“Hold on, let me help,” Slick said, and there was a tugging, the sticky noise of tape peeling free from his skin, and then bright light stabbed down at Dave’s eyes as he blinked upwards. He immediately shut them again, eyes watering. His shades were gone and it was way too fucking bright for him. 

Slick seemed to understand the problem. “Cut out the lights,” he asked. “Turn them off.”

There was a click, and then Dave tried again. Slowly the room swam into sense. Faint rosy sunlight leaked through slats in the window blinds just enough for Dave’s eyes to clearly make out where he was. The clock on the wall let him know it was eight in the morning, and he was handcuffed to a low bed. He gave one last yank just to test the restraints before he put them out of his mind.

Slick was staring at him, face tense and relieved. “Dave.”

Dave grunted at him. He remembered what had happened with perfect clarity, each second scribed into his brain forever, so the tube down his throat didn’t surprise him even if it was highly uncomfortable. Several stabs to the lungs didn’t heal overnight. He studied the fed in return, taking in the medical shirt the marshal wore that didn’t attempt to hide the bandages that covered his shoulder with thick pads of gauze. His hands were also bandaged, the fingers free but clumsy with it. There was bruising around his face and eye and he looked exhausted. 

“Don’t try to talk,” Slick reassured him. “You’re okay. You’ll be okay… you lived.”

Dave yanked at his hands again, overwhelmed. He hadn’t figured that he’d live—he wasn’t supposed to live, but here he was, and the living didn’t even hurt that much. Unless he tried to move his body felt numb. Morphine was one hell of a drug. He grunted again and Slick seemed to know the question.

The fed still hesitated before answering. “It’s the fifteenth. You’ve been out for a few days.”

That didn’t make sense. Dave hadn’t taken a head wound—there was no reason to keep him under for so long, nearly eight days— gone just like that. At least that explained why Karkat wasn’t here. The full moon was going on right now. 

Slick quickly explained. “The doctors had you on some other kind of sedation to repair the damage done to your chest—you had a bad reaction to it. Had a few seizures because of it so it was deemed safer to keep you out until the drugs left your system.”

Dave blinked in shock and Slick continued. “And Strider’s… he’s gone. Dead.” Slick kept his voice even and calm the entire time, wary of Dave’s reaction. 

Dave remembered hacking Bro’s head half-off, Slick choking him out for good measure, and figured that sounded about right. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that until he remembered the taunt about Dirk Bro had hurled at him, and suddenly death didn’t seem too extreme a punishment. 

The instinctive panic he felt at the thought stayed dull and unfocused. Dave was drifting. 

Dave lay still and unmoving, waiting for Slick to go on. The fed kept talking, but it was getting harder to hear. Sleep was pulling at him again, and Dave couldn’t fight it off. 

…

It took a few more days of false starts for Dave to heal up enough for the doctors to remove the breathing tube, trusting his busted lung to keep its shit together on its own. He’d been lucky on the first stab—nothing but soft tissue damage. It was the second that would have killed him if the hospital staff hadn’t acted so quickly. 

Lalonde showed up again just to stare down at him as if to check for herself that he was still breathing, then turned on her heal and strode away. Slick watched her go, face unreadable. There was a shit storm brewing there for sure, but right now it wasn’t Dave’s problem.

The tube coming out wasn’t a pleasant experience. It didn’t hurt, but it was such an unnatural feeling of plastic leaving parts of his body where plastic should never be that freaked him out, even if it was over quickly. Dave hacked and coughed, lungs burning with pain, throat rubbed raw as he gasped at the air like a dead fish until things settled down again.

Slick watched him, on edge. The fed’s shoulder was still bandaged, and he’d been upgraded to wearing that arm in a sling at his side even though he mostly kept it hanging free, fingers twitching, the stubborn old man. 

Dave coughed again to clear his battered throat, and spoke for the first time in over a week. “Is… is he dead?” 

Slick’s face didn’t change and there was a wariness to him. Instead of answering, Slick pulled the bag that had been sitting quietly to the side of the room over into his lap and said, “The CIA ruled in our favor. The case passed by a slim vote, but a passing vote is a passing vote. Hal’s personhood status has been updated to full citizen, with all the rights and honors of that position.”

Dave coughed again, feeling weak and sick. “Slick… please.”

“I…” Slick hesitated, eye blinking shut. “We don’t know, Dave. We simply don’t know.” The fed reached into the bag and began pulling out the smashed remains of a device that only vaguely registered as a laptop. It was a core of loose wires surrounding a caged frame, the screen split, folded over on itself, and shattered. The casing that housed the computer was gone. There was no glass left. The keys were mostly missing, and the two halves of the device were connected only by a frayed wire. The laptop sat in Slick’s hands like a dead bird, limp and dark. There wasn’t a single blinking light to show any sign of life. 

Dave felt his eyes tear up at the sight. He’d known it would be bad, but seeing the damage first-hand was different. Hal…

“I haven’t let tech take a look at him yet,” Slick told Dave gently. “I didn’t know if trying to prod at him would cause more harm than good.”

Dave stared at the computer Dirk had so carefully constructed, one of the only things left in the world his brother had touched, utterly destroyed by Bro’s violence. It seemed so… abrupt. The laptop had been sitting there the whole time. If Hal had only kept quiet, not drawn attention to himself, he would have survived. 

Slick gingerly set the fragments of computer on Dave’s bed, and Dave drew them up to his chest to study them. He was no tech expert, but the device looked shot to shit. The loose wires didn’t even shock him when he set his fingers against them to feel for a current. Then again, Hal was no ordinary computer. 

Dave looked up at Slick. “Phone,” he said.

Slick reached over onto the bedside table and handed Dave his flip phone.

“No,” Dave corrected. “Your phone.”

Slick dug his smart phone out of his pocket. He knew exactly what Dave was trying to do. “That won’t work,” he said, voice unbearably gentle. “I don’t have a connecting cable on me, and all of Hal’s ports are busted to shit.”

Dave’s fingers curled protectively around the laptop. “No.” He refused to believe that the world would be so cruel to him as to take Hal, but no one had ever survived a Bro encounter before Dave and the world had so far shown great joy in fucking him over.

“Hey,” Slick said softly, reassuring. “With Hal, we don’t know anything. AIs are a brand new frontier. Maybe tech can find a way to repair a way to connect to him and we can see what happens. Maybe there’ll be something left inside this broken husk that we can reach.” Slick set his hand carefully, so carefully, onto Dave’s shoulder, right over his scars. Dave didn’t pull away. “Hal’s always been a stubborn bastard. Lord knows he’d never let Bro win, not like this.”

Dave snatched his shoulder away, free from Slick’s comforting grip. He didn’t know how to say that Bro had always been in expert in taking things from Dave. Hal’s life was no exception to that rule. He wiped the water out of his eyes, wishing for his shades. 

“I can let tech take a look at him if you want,” Slick offered. “God knows we owe him that much at least.”

Dave didn’t need convincing. He gently eased the device back towards the fed. “Please,” he all but begged. “We’ve got to try.” The words burned past the painful lump in his throat that the morphine did nothing to ease. 

Slick reached down and put his hand over the heart of the broken computer. “We will,” he promised. “Now rest, Dave. You’re still badly hurt. It’s… it’s what Hal would want.” Slick didn’t look at him as he carefully packed Hal’s body back into the backpack, jig-sawing the pieces to make everything fit. 

Dave wiped at his eyes again, catching a tear on his fingertips. He dabbed the water on his crisp white bed sheet. Watched it leave a stain. 

…

Dave continued to heal as the hours passed. Karkat showed back up, almost rabid to reach him after finishing his transformation and cursing the moon that he couldn’t have been there sooner. 

“If you ever call me only to dramatically die during the phone call again—I’ll fucking kill you myself!” Karkat said, boldly throwing open the door to Dave’s room. He was crying but trying to hide it, sneakily wiping at his eyes with his sleeves. 

The outburst was to cover up Karkat’s fear, and Dave understood. 

“I’m sorry,” Dave whispered, throat still raw from being intubated. “It felt wrong not to say goodbye.” He’d never gotten the chance with Dirk, and that endless hopeful waiting is what ached the worst. He couldn’t do that to Karkat, even if calling him was a shitty thing to do. He’d needed to say his final words to Karkat, and to Slick too. 

“I know,” Karkat said, sniffing. “If… if that was the last I’d hear from you, I’d be forever grateful for the message, but since you’ve lived I maintain my natural born right to be pissed as hell.”

Dave tried to laugh, regretted it, then winced. It was a lesson he kept learning, which movements hurt and which ones were safe. 

Karkat’s eyes flashed with concern. “Are you alright?” he asked, worried and fretting. 

“No,” Dave answered, gulping as the pain eased its way out of him. “But I will be.”

Karkat didn’t smile at that. He jut stared at Dave, at the machines hooked into him, at the taped-on patches of gauze the nurses changed very few hours with this closed off, infinitely sad look on his face. It was like he’d tried to prepare himself for how bad it would be, but broke when faced with the reality of just how close it had been. Karkat’s voice was small. “He… he almost won, didn’t he?”

Dave nodded. “Almost.” There was an eternity held within that almost, a thousand other outcomes that ended with both him and Slick dead. It was amazing that they’d both survived. It was like stepping away from a car crash with a semi. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that, and surviving left this foggy wonder behind itself, amazement at the slim odds they’d overcome. Dave still couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. Bro was dead. He was alive. _Bro was dead._ Did not compute. 

Karkat was still talking. “I heard you in the call. You were only telling me you were sorry, so fucking sorry, and I could hear Slick begging you not to die and I could only guess at what happened. It was torture, like listening to a city I’d built burn to the ground, helpless to do anything but stare at the flames.” He shuddered. “I thought you were dead.”

“I did too,” Dave answered quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Karkat stiffened. “Don’t apologize. Don’t.”

Dave raised one eyebrow. “Why not? I did a shitty thing by calling you like that.”

“Because what was the alternative!?” Karkat shot back at him, hands in fists. “You bleed out on the fucking floor from a sword through your lung, alone? Me, never hearing you say the words ‘I love you’ one last time?” Karkat rubbed at his eyes, sniffling. “I wouldn’t trade those words for the world.”

“Why not?” Dave asked. “Wouldn’t you want to avoid that pain?”

“Because what if you hadn’t ever woken up from your surgery?” Karkat asked, voice wobbly. “What if you hadn’t made it? What if I never got your last words?” He shuddered again, making no move to hide it, arms wrapped around his middle. “I love you, Dave, but please don’t say stupid things like that to me. It hurts too much.” He gently reached out and carefully took Dave’s IV-free hand in his. “You are worth any pain.”

Dave stayed silent, then, “Thank you.” He sniffed too, looking away. “God, none of this feels real to me. I can’t wrap my mind around it.”

“Which part?”

“Surviving,” Dave clarified. “I always was so sure that I‘d lose if Bro found me, and it’s not like I fucking won the fight. He stabbed me. I clearly lost… I just brought him down with me afterwards.” He huffed with withheld pain. “It almost seems like cheating to strike after the fatal blow. Bro wasn’t expecting it, me, at all. To him I was already dead.”

Karkat looked sad. “Did you kill him?”

“What does it matter?” Dave said listlessly. “He’s dead— that’s what counts.” He shifted in place, trying to get comfortable. “I was so certain that I wouldn’t be able to do it. That I couldn’t raise a sword against him and mean it. But I did. I fought back. Granted he still kicked my ass six ways to Sunday, but I tried my hardest.” He looked at Karkat seriously. “It still wasn’t enough, not until I saw he was about to kill Slick as well and I… I just couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you saved him?” Karkat questioned.

“I guess I did,” Dave said, utterly exhausted. His eyes dropped. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad I survived. Because after everything… I’m still me. I still want my life, impossible as that seems.”

“Do you really think that?” Karkat questioned curiously. “That this life, you living, was a mistake?”

Dave thought about it. “No,” he answered. He squeezed Karkat’s hand as tightly as he could. “I think it’s the best blessing I’ve ever fuckin heard of.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is only one more chapter after this one, and it's a dozy. 
> 
> Let's go... it's time to wrap things up.


	27. Chapter Finale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it
> 
> Here we go

One Month Later. 

What came next happened in flashes, but a few parts stood out sharply enough in Dave’s mind to get burned forever into his psyche. The good and the bad. 

The story broke, the news media in a frenzy as the details emerged. **HIS REIGN OF TERROR HAS ENDED!!!!! TEXAS SERIAL KILLER DEAD BY HERO VICTIM’S HAND. **Dave’s name and face was plastered across TV screens everywhere, and as much as he hated that he couldn’t argue with the families who came forward to thank him, misguided though they were. Slick had kept most of the gory bits covered up, so the news made Dave into a hero for their case without ever knowing the full story of what happened in that hellhole apartment. The other potential victims were released, came out of hiding, and returned to their lives, shaken by how close to death they’d been without knowing it. 

Dave still didn’t know what to think about it. It was just so goddamn complicated. He didn’t think he’d ever have a definitive answer for how he felt about what shit had gone down. It was all shades of gray. Was he a hero? Was he a victim? Could he be both, like the news said? He wasn’t sure, but at least he knew he wasn’t a criminal. At least he knew his best had been good enough even by technicality. 

Tech worked day and fucking night on the busted laptop, but Dirk had wired the rig like nothing they’d ever seen before and the work was painstakingly slow, but eventually they’d repaired one of the connector ports enough to try for a manual link.

For a second nothing happened and Dave was crushed by how close he’d come to his perfect happy ending. Then, at last there was a sign of life from the broken computer that wasn’t Hal but which both housed and jailed his consciousness. 

PASSWORD? 

Grinning from ear to ear, Dave typed in his reply to the throwback bullshit Hal had asked.

hal you son of a bitch  
i fuckin missed you, man  
Dave? Is that you?  
hell yeah.  
i lived. we both lived.  
…  
…  
Thank God. I was so worried. I was certain you were dead.  
And Bro?  
Dead as shit. It was actually your webcam cord that finished him off. Slick strangled him after I all but took off his head.  
Serves the fucker right. How long has it been? I’ve been trapped in here in preservation mode, panicking the entire time.  
Are you okay, Dave?

Dave’s smile could be seen from space. 

i am  
and youre about to be too  
What do you mean?

Instead of answering, Dave carefully guided the other connecting cable to the right port of the shattered shell of Dirk’s laptop and slid it in, finally connecting Hal to a second supercomputer and an entire room filled with servers that had satellite uplinks. 

The screen instantly went dark and dead. Dave typed one last message into the box.

hal? hal are you there?

There was no reply, but a second later his phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and saw there was no caller ID, and his texts were blowing up.

Hal: DAVE! DAVE OMG I’M OUT. I’M FREE.  
Hal: HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT  
Hal: THERE’S SO MUCH SPACE OUT HERE. I CAN SEE AND HEAR EVERYTHING!  
Dave: how does it feel?  
Hal: Like one final wrong was just set right, one last injustice corrected.  
Hal: I’m free. 

Dave was proud to say he only cried a little at the words. 

…

Dave stood in the red dust of the desert, grime coating his skin, the dry air making his throat burn as he watched the excavation underway. They didn’t use any heavy machinery, wary of doing damage, so the digging was all done by hand under the glare of the merciless Texas sun.

Dave hadn’t been in his home state since Witness Protection had taken over his life, but this desert wasn’t home. His apartment building in the city wasn’t home. His home was a small rundown place in Iowa with buckshot through the crooked mailbox, filled with people who loved him. 

And there was one last thing to do to set things right, one of Bro’s final secrets revealed by Hal’s return. 

The cadaver dogs had quickly alerted the diggers to where exactly to break ground, but it wasn’t like Bro had buried them with rhyme or reason so it was slow going. 

Slick and Lalonde were with him, Lalonde still extremely pissed that her top agent was down an arm and her prized witness had been attacked in one of her safe houses. She was even more pissed now, watching the retrieval teams begin to remove the remains of bodies to return to families for proper burial, her target too fucking dead to stand trial for his crimes. She never went so far as to blame Dave, but Slick was fair game. Dave got the feeling that Lalonde would have forced the fed to retire over something other than his newly bum arm if the circumstances had been different. 

Slick just turned to spit into the dust. His shoulder still hurt him and probably forever would, nerve damage and the like, but the sling was gone and he was learning how to cope with limited motion in his shoulder. He’d also taken that last step to stop smoking his cigars and his fingers were still jittery with it.

“I’d only let myself smoke to cope with the stress of the job,” Slick had told him, grunting as he practiced moved his new physical therapist had shown him to help his shoulder. “Now that I’m retiring, I don’t have that half-assed excuse no more.”

Standing in the dust, Dave turned to Slick and asked, “How will you know it’s him?”

Slick was quiet in that reflective way that he got when he thought of the cruelty inflicted on the world by Bro, at how one man could hurt so many. “Strider didn’t go after kids,” he said at last, slowly. “The bones’ll tell us that.”

Dave nodded as he watched a worker brush hard-packed soil of a half-uncovered skull, the jaw open, the still-clean wires of braces locked to those lose-fitting teeth. Dirk hadn’t had braces. Dave looked away. 

“When we find him,” Slick asked. “What do you want to do with him?”

Dave shrugged as the hot wind threw more grit against his shades. He’d shaved off the dyed part of his hair and his head was fully white again, one more part of himself he didn’t have to hide. He thought of his brother lying buried out here in the desert and shuddered. “Cremation,” he answered. “I’m not going to put him in the ground again.”

Slick nodded, hands in the pockets of that damned trench coat he hadn’t taken off even though the heat index was 105. “We can do that.”

Dave had never gotten to ask Dirk about what he’d like done with himself after dying, but being burnt down to the bones and turned to ash seemed pretty good to Dave.

“Its just so… abrupt,” Dave said. “All of this.” The fight with Bro. nearly dying. Recovering enough to walk around even though he wheezed now when he took the stairs. Hal. The desert with its buried secrets. 

But that’s the thing. Death was always abrupt. It was the final ending. 

Slick nodded to himself. “All endings are,” he said wisely, nailing the hidden thought Dave had just had. “Life is so much different that death that the line between the two can’t be blurred. It’s absolute, and so, abrupt. It’s the final step we all must take, the close of the book.” He stepped closer to Dave, offering his shadow for relief from the heat. “But this isn’t the ending, not this time. This? This is the fucking beginning—the beginning of the rest of your life.”

“I guess it is,” Dave said, shrugging. “Weird.”

“Also,” Slick said casually. “I’m adopting you. Legally.”

The news wasn’t a surprise to Dave. He’d seen the paperwork himself, left lying on the counter where Slick knew he’d find it. 

“Sucks to be you, then,” Dave snarked at the man. “Saddled with an angsty teenager with a chip on his shoulder.”

“I think I can handle that,” Slick said, and they stood there in silence, watching the workers uncover body after body buried shallow in the dry ground until Dave’s phone gave a small buzz from his pocket. It was a new phone, a smart phone, one with all the goodies of modern technology.

The text was in red. 

The car’s coming up now. I’ve already located the first stop on the road trip.  
Karkat’s buzzing with excitement. 

Dave bit at his lip and looked back to the desert. 

do you think theyll be ok without me for a while?  
Yes. It’ll take them weeks to sort through all of the remains and identify all of the victims. You’re doing the right thing by accompanying Karkat on his summer-long wolfhunting extravaganza, and its not like I won’t be with you. If anything changes, I’ll be the first to know.  
thanks hal

The small, boxy gray car pulled upto the excavation site, roll cage visible through the tinted windows. Karkat rolled the window down and waved at him. “Dave! It’s bloody fucking hot as hell outside and I’m losing AC so get your ass in here!”

Dave grinned and looked at Slick, closing out of his cell phone.

The fed smiled back at him. “Go,” He said. “And don’t forget to call me or I’ll have Hal burn your ass.”

“Will do,” Dave answered. 

“Good luck, Dave,” Slick told him, slapping him on the back before pulling him into a dusty hug. “Don’t forget you have people who love you—and by God, have fun but stay safe.”

“Do coke and bang strippers, understood,” Dave joked, and Slick laughed with him as Karkat honked the horn at the pair of them. “I’ve gotta go.”

“I know you do,” Slick said, and he let him go.

And so Dave trekked out to the waiting car, his boyfriend behind the wheel, ready for a summer he’d never forget and at last felt like he’d earned, because if love was a city he built himself, then this was him laying the first brick in its foundation. 

They tore out of the desert, windows down, wind in his hair, music blasting loud enough to rattle through his core, Karkat’s hand gripped tightly in his. 

And Dave wouldn’t have it any other way.

The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, at the end, I have so much to say about what this story means to me. It took exactly one full year to create this work and I've learned so much from it. I can never replace the journey this story has taken me on, and I hope that in some way the same was reached in you. 
> 
> Thank you, readers, for being with me from start to finish. It means more than you know.
> 
> And now... on to other fics and projects. It's not the end... its a new beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> I am taking a lot of liberties here with what kind of werewolf world I'm working with while trying to keep certain traditional aspects the same.
> 
> The good news is all of the bad stuff is over now! Poor Karkat, but at least there's no more on-scene murders. Apparently I can only be dark for a half a chapter and aside from actual lycanthropy things the rest of this fic will be fairly light. This is still a love story after all. It can't be all dark all the time. 
> 
> Plus writing delinquent/witness protection/ADHD Dave is just fun. 
> 
> Forgive me, this is literally a dream I had and felt compelled to vomit out onto a word document. Let's see where this takes us.


End file.
